"I think that is one of the best gifts that you can give other people is yes, we're all just chemical biological beings at the beginning of these, and we have all the choices in the world to go somewhere else."- Nathan Hughes

In this episode of the Facilitation Lab podcast, host Douglas Ferguson converses with Nathan Hughes, COO and co-founder of Detroit Labs. Nathan shares his journey from a technology-focused career to embracing facilitation and leadership. He discusses the pivotal role of facilitation in managing teams, especially during crises like the pandemic. Nathan highlights the importance of practice in low-stakes environments to build facilitation skills and emphasizes the need for trust and connection within teams. He also offers advice for technology leaders transitioning into management, stressing the value of redefining success and maintaining personal creative outlets.

"I take the opportunity to build culture and connection with that team to make them stronger. And that's something that's really rewarding for me—when I leave the process to see after nine months of working with them that this team is much more close, more connected, and trusts each other more.."- Julie Baeb

In this episode of the Facilitation Lab podcast, host Douglas Ferguson speaks with Julie Baeb, a Senior Consultant at Team Works. Julie shares her diverse career journey from advertising to architecture and eventually education, where she developed a STEM enrichment program. They discuss pivotal moments in Julie's facilitation career, including a transformative professional development session and a human-centered design retreat she led for school administrators. Julie emphasizes the importance of icebreakers, observation, and incorporating play and movement into sessions to foster engagement and psychological safety. The episode highlights Julie's commitment to building strong, connected teams through thoughtful facilitation.

""When you just take the time to apply a few of these facilitation techniques, it really can help people focus, help them make better, more efficient decisions, and ultimately feel like they're all bought in on it."" - Phil Canning

In this episode of the Facilitation Lab podcast, host Douglas Ferguson talks to Phil Canning, leader of the Human Centered Design Studio and Facilitation Practice at Ally Financial. They discuss Phil's journey into facilitation, the importance of design thinking, and how it has transformed the way Ally Financial operates. Phil shares his experiences of facilitating workshops, emphasizing the need to create a safe and inclusive environment. They also discuss the importance of cross-industry learning and the transformative power of facilitation. The episode concludes with an encouragement for listeners to explore the potential of facilitation in their own work environments.

"We have two really strong capacities [as human beings]. One is about discipline, finishing things and staying aligned. ...We'll call that the discipline muscle.  The other muscle is the initiative muscle. That's where we're going out on a limb, we're taking a risk, we're being creative, we're curious about what might happen if." -Diana Joseph

Diana Joseph is the Founder of the Corporate Accelerator Forum, an organization that builds a space for key relationships, stories, & tools in corporate entities to thrive in innovation.  Diana's vast "mission-driven" projects creates an entrepreneurial perspective for both individuals and organizations. Diana empowers others to embrace the failure when innovation projects are unsuccessful and learning from the "why." Her work encourages organizations to foster connections and innovate cohesively. As a Co-Host of the Ecosystem Show on Clubhouse, she continues to inspire organizations'  approaches in self-determination, creative confidence, and innovation culture alike.  

In this episode of Control the Room, Diana and I discuss the need for open dialogue between startup & corporate organizations, the unique space Diana curates to collectively come together through specified expertise, a look inside the world of anthropology and its benefits of implementation in the workplace, an understanding of design-based research thinking, and the reminder of an entrepreneurial approach in facilitation. Listen in to hear Diana reveal her passion in design-based research and the explorative efforts both organizations can gain in changing the conversation and working together.  

"Learning by being with an expert and learning how they think and why they think is super important, but not necessarily an expert who's the best. ...The best ways that you can learn are from people who just learned it. Scaffolding your learning and putting yourself in environments where you're learning from someone who just learned something is the fastest way you can basically learn things in the modern world." -Spawrks

Spawrks is the Co-Host of Space Pencils, a community built to enrich leadership skills where leaders can solely focus on leadership development within their organizations. Spawrks's cutting edge point of view changes the narrative in the learning process as he understands the significance of learning in the moment. He emphasizes the importance of asking the right questions towards ultimately accomplishing your goals in organizations. Spawrks believes the way you approach learning can not only have a direct impact on your work, but also in collaboration with other members in your organization. As a leading software engineer at Vrbo, he challenges the learning approach through learning in action as the most impactful solution forward.  

In this episode of Control the Room, Spawrks and I unpack the benefits of learning from an unorthodox perspective, the moments of stepping outside of the traditional learning loop, the crucial "linking" aspect in facilitation, and the responsibility of learning from the lessons of the pandemic as we embrace a new hybrid workplace.  Listen in to hear Spawrks explores the endless possibilities of an innovative hybrid workplace and the significance of the learning process reimagined in the modern world.  

"As leaders, I think it's very important to determine 'what kind of community are you building?' 'What kind of space are you providing?' Leaders then have to decide 'what kind of communities are we creating [in the organization], what kind of spaces and what kind of empathy do we have for the people on our team?'" -Elizabeth Maloba

Elizabeth Maloba is the Co-Founder of Nahari, an organization built for creating authentic spaces where collaborative learning and collective decision-making unfold. She understands the critical foundation of building community in the ecosystem of an organization and the level of trust needed to thrive when seeking solutions. Elizabeth ultimately believes that community is more than a place, it's also an identity and ongoing process. Her work leans into the continuous journey of improving team dynamics and a leader's need to transform conversations. As an expert facilitator with architectural influence, she challenges organizations' approaches when conflict arises to instill sustainable, implementable resolutions from direct collaboration.  

In this episode of Control the Room, Elizabeth and I discuss the value of experiential methods, the impact the pandemic had on mental health in the workplace, the necessity and personal meaning behind community in organizations, and the benefits having challenging conversations has on cross cross-sectoral collaboration. Listen in to hear Elizabeth unveil the elements behind creating the community you envision for your organization. She also explores how to identify the root of core challenges your organization faces so that your team can build greater solutions together.  

"The way that your organization and your team meet is either something that can emerge out of habit and grow organically, which may or may not be a good thing, or it's something that you can design. It...starts by actually looking at what you're doing and having an honest conversation about whether that's working for you." -Elise Keith

Elise Keith is the CEO of Lucid Meetings, a company that leads with innovation to improve the quality of organization's meetings. She understands the reality of taking a detailed look at the structure and underlying processes behind organizations' meetings to identify areas of opportunity for better engagement and exceptional performance. Elise believes successful, everyday meetings are achievable and encourages teams to lead with conversation and tailor-made meeting experiences. According to Elise, the ultimate challenge is for every team member within an organization to initiate the meeting about meetings and watch the benefits of your organization unfold. 

In this episode of Control the Room, Elise and I discuss the layers of rules for "the meeting," in productive organizations, the impact of creating custom meeting systems through Lucid Meetings, the significance of effective decision-making, and the need for intentional conversations about the meetings that take place in your organization. Listen in to hear how Elise reveals the methods behind productive meeting outcomes and the importance of clarity before, during, and after your next meeting, while allowing everyone to ultimately succeed. 

"This work really is about the design of human connection because there is a design. There's a design to conversations that turn out well, and there's a design to conversations that don't. If you...start to understand the design of what brings people together to actually produce more than you might imagine, you can create that magic...regardless of the circumstances." -Robin Anselmi

Robin Anselmi is the Chief Executive Officer at Conservant, a consulting agency that specializes in having high-quality conversations with team organizations and ultimately sets them up for success to achieve their biggest goals. She believes in the power of a grounded, connected leader to set the standard in growing together. Robin continues her mission at Conservant to reinforce the importance of human connection within organizations and striving towards innovation. As she encourages leaders to personify staying present, Robin reminds us to create the culture and strategy that works best for your own organization together. The foundation resides in the quality of your team's honest, authentic conversations.  

In this episode of Control the Room, Robin and I discuss the impact of presence in leaders leading to team innovation, the ongoing balance in assumptions, the leader's unique challenge of correction instead of perfection, and the magnitude of a connected leader in its organization. Listen in to hear how Robin reveals the importance of human connection leading to authentic conversations, and the significance of a leader listening while remaining grounded in presence. 

"More and more people are starting to recognize that the problems that we're having usually aren't issues of good versus evil.  It's differences of perspective. And if we can take the time to learn these skills and use negotiation as a tool to resolve these conflicts, we could leave these conflicts with stronger relationships and better deals." -Kwame Christian

Kwame Christian is the Director at the American Negotiation Institute, a consulting firm that focuses entirely on embracing the negotiation skills of entrepreneurs and small-business owners. He believes negotiation is arguably the most important skill set as professionals. As the current host of the 'Negotiate Anything' Podcast, Kwame continues the conversation surrounding negotiation as the foundation forward when conflict or uncomfortable conversations arise.  As he empowers others to seek confidence in conflict, Kwame is committed in his mission of leaning into conflict to uncover resolution, while building better relationships through authentic, honest conversations.   

In this episode of Control the Room, Kwame and I discuss breaking down biases in negotiation, the unique approach in negotiation scenarios, strategizing conversations and key recommendations within conflict, and the unique superpower of negotiation in all aspects of life. Listen in to hear how Kwame is encouraging voices to lean into uncomfortable conversations, and how to have effective relationships from the kitchen table to the conference room. The power is in the art of negotiation. 

"I realized...that I could teach people[leaders in organizations] to pay attention to their own body all day and all night, but that doesn't change the system unless that person has a motivation to look outside themselves and make a change with the people around them. "

Jade Duggan is the Strategic Counselor at Mindbody Leadership, a Communications Culture Design expert, and Wellness Coach in Holistic practices. She inspires organizations to lead in mindfulness & self-awareness as the foundation of their company culture. She is committed to establishing healthy practices in business rooted in sensory skills & the intentionality of leadership in organization structure.  From her early holistic roots of acupuncture in the family business, Jade began to recognize its connection towards social reform. Jade continues her mission towards social change in organizations through transformative leadership and unleashing the power of listening to your own body.

In this episode of Control the Room, Jade and I discuss locating your sensory skills as humans through the "light-switch hijack," navigating facilitation through mindfulness, applying the skills of self-awareness in leadership towards organization infrastructure, and the evolution of the micro-habit practice. Listen in to hear how Jade is inspiring her wellness expertise through organizations to reestablish company structure in mindfulness & self-awareness.

"I think the first question a facilitator should ask is, 'Do I have a model or does the model have me?'...As a facilitator, we want to encounter the other methods, so that frankly, we're more resilient to shocks in our group. "

Marcus Crow is the Co-Founder of 10,000 Hours and a scholar practitioner for over 20+ years, where he masterfully inspires teams to develop new skills to reach their maximum potential and deliver unique content for training through organizations. He reminds teams to stay "relentlessly self-improving" & has partnered with leading companies to enrich their collaboration and engagement within their teams. With his versatile methodology approach in facilitation, Marcus believes in the counterbalance of control and freedom and the facilitator muscle one must continuously stretch to deliver impactful meetings. 

In this episode of Control the Room, Marcus and I discuss the re-discovery of focus in performance for organizations, the juxtaposition of control and freedom methodologies in facilitation, the greater performance impact in teams through the pandemic, and the ongoing need for facilitators to embrace new methods for their delivery success. Listen in to hear how Marcus is revealing the truth about the versatile facilitator and the significance of facilitation as a true lifestyle.

"Because there is this law or that law, or people started giving us all the reasons that things don't have to change or all of the things that are preventing change, [it] prevents people from dreaming about something different. How do we create these just, equitable, and diverse futures moving forward?"

Lesley is the NC State University Asst. Professor of Design and Author & Creator of the Designers Critical Alphabet, a tool created to spark reflection and introduce designers & design students to critical theory.  She inspires her students & established designers alike to lead with empathy in design and build a greater social impact. With her leading research in equity-centered design thinking through diverse audiences and public health, Leslie represents the significance of a non-specialist approach in design and a larger need for industry-led social responsibility through design. 

In this episode of Control the Room, Lesley and I discuss the greater social impact in design, the journey of her career through design thinking, a detailed look into the designer's Critical Alphabet, the ideas behind critical race theory, and the necessary reminder of an empathetic approach in design. Listen in to hear how Lesley is expanding her design education footprint for future designers of our generation.

"If you've got a breath and you're a warm body, then I know that fun is going to be the magic, my most potent weapon...to be able to invite you to participate."

Mark Collard is the Founder of Playmeo, a company that provides a group-game wonderland with over 440+ games & activities towards team building and experiential education. He inspires facilitators, educators, and managers to empower groups to connect more effectively and build stronger teams. With training workshops and invaluable resources in their online database, Mark offers the essentials and more to exercise trust for organizations. Mark's mission to lead with fun through games can ultimately lead to magic and results. 

In this episode of Control the Room, Mark and I discuss the creation of the temporary community to foster trust, the deliberate/strategic approach of connection before content, and the ongoing virtual facilitation challenge towards engagement. Listen in to hear how Mark is masterfully leading with humanity in his group game bag of tricks to not only build connections in groups, but amplify results in your organization. 

"Listening in the silence, observing, seeing what's not being said in that silence, that tells a whole story as well." - Reshma Khan

In this podcast episode, Douglas Ferguson interviews Reshma Aziz Khan, the CEO and Founder of Kenzo Consulting Limited. They discuss Reshma's background in the nonprofit sector and her interest in facilitation. Reshma shares a story about her first experience working with a facilitator in Zimbabwe and how it sparked her curiosity and excitement about the power of facilitation. They also discuss Reshma's approach to facilitating workshops and building connections among participants, including the use of Whole Brain Dominance and unconventional seating arrangements. Reshma shares her experience transitioning to becoming a facilitator and the importance of networking. They also talk about the concept of holding silence and the impact of building confidence through practice and continuous learning. The episode concludes with Douglas inviting listeners to leave a review and subscribe to the podcast.

"It's all about how you work with teams, not as a collection of individuals, but as a team, as an organism essentially. And that just completely changed the way that I facilitate and work with teams."

Sara Nelson is the Senior Director of Design at PepsiCo, where she leads the charge of design thinking programs forward to drive key outcomes.  Sara seeks to uncover the patterns & relationships her teams practice to develop greater strategies and leverage better results. 

In this episode of Control the Room, Sara and I discuss the impact of design thinking for team success in organizations, the collaboration efforts teams must exemplify, the "worthy workshop" intention and expectation, and the ongoing mindset of learning. Listen in to hear how Sara is reinforcing design thinking as the foundation forward in her organization and beyond.

"Universities have the opportunity to create micro-credentials, unbundle their education and then drive them[students] to a different ecosystem in terms of a lifelong learning model that is aligned to industry."

Matt Alex is the Co-Founder of Beyond Academics, where he guides the Future of Work and Digital Transformation divisions to gather the most brilliant minds of higher education, entrepreneurship, innovation and industry.  Matt strives to transform the college experience by inspiring lead educators across universities from around the country in collaboration towards a life-long learning workforce for the future of work. 

In this episode of Control the Room, Matt and I discuss the future of work through the higher education lens, the juxtaposition of the earn-it model with the life-long model for students, the unbundling and reimagination of the college experience, and the breakdown of segments in structured and unstructured work.  Listen in to hear how Matt is changing the course of higher education for the future of our workforce.

"I think there's a real power in a community and having a community of diverse backgrounds.  I feel our unique position with the Facilitation Lab gives facilitators the opportunity to not only practice in a safe and inclusive environment with other facilitators of different backgrounds, but also that there aren't a lot of unique spaces for and by facilitators to openly do just that."

Kierra Johnson is the Community Manager at Voltage Control and host of the weekly Control Room Facilitation Lab where she focuses on nurturing a network of facilitators. The lab is a place where facilitators connect, ideate, and troubleshoot methods and activities in a virtual forum to gain real-time learning and feedback. She connects hundreds of facilitators from around the world with a passion for practice and continuous growth in facilitation. 

In this episode of Control the Room, Kierra and I discuss the power of positivity,facilitation lab's impact, and how facilitators are connecting beyond the Lab. Listen in to hear how Facilitation Lab   supports the needs of facilitators and the significance of experimentation. 

"I think that people have been trying to facilitate these virtual meetings and they're pretty dry in a lot of ways, but they get the point across and that's good, but they're finding maybe a lack of productivity that happens when people just feel like this mundane day-to-day."

Rachael Green is the CEO and Founder at Rach Green Cocktails, where she uses high level hospitality, spirits and cocktail knowledge to entertain thousands of people from around the world.

In this episode of Control the Room, Rachael and I discuss hospitality, hybrid events, and mixology. Listen in to hear how prioritizing fun and connection can usher in balance and harmony within your teams.

"The only assumptions that can hurt our products are the ones we don't know about. I lean into the assumptions, I say, "Let's get them all out on the table." Let's align around them, because until we get all of you guys aligned, we're not going to be able to change your minds anyway."

Tamara Adlin is a UX expert and consultant who helps startups, and companies who want to behave more like startups, create products their customers love. She is also the co-author of the Persona Lifecycle book series and has created a method she calls Alignment Personas.

In this episode of Control the Room, I talk with Tamara about shared narratives, alignment and personas. Listen in to hear how exploring assumptions and allowing data to inform decision making creates a unified team and a clear perspective.

"Using the other person's words is the nearest thing that the FBI has to a Jedi mind trick, because when the other person hears their words coming back, what they think is that person is using words like mine, therefore, they must be like me, therefore, I should like them."

Judy Rees is a consultant at Rees McCann where she leads a community of trainers, facilitators, producers and others who want to make online better than in-the-room. She is also the co-author of the Web Events That Connect How-to Guide and Clean Language: Revealing Metaphors and Opening Minds.

In this episode of Control the Room, I talk with Judy about clean language, gardening, and contextual intent. Listen in to learn what subtleties can be uncovered in the words we use every day, through active listening and asking the right questions.

"I think about creativity as toggling between wonder and rigor to solve problems and the way we can get better at that toggling, the way we can get better at exercising our creativity is through what I call the three I's. And the three I's are inquiry, improvisation and intuition."

Natalie Nixon is a creativity strategist and president of Figure 8 Thinking, where she helps leaders achieve transformative business results by applying creativity and foresight. As a global keynote speaker as well as author, editor, and contributor of multiple writing publications, Natalie communicates awe and inspires teams around the world to reach their maximum business value.

In this episode of Control the Room, I talk with Natalie about polymaths, dance, fashion and gratitude. Listen in to see how wonder, structure and grace can make the major difference in an organization when interconnected.

"I often say that the facilitators who have been in this profession for over seven, eight, 10 years, we've been very fortunate to learn through trial and error. We made some errors, we got feedback, et cetera. Today I think there's less room for errors, which means peer reviews. I like what you said, if you are doing those practice sessions, that's when you have got to put people through situations where they are stepping back. Are they jumping in to share their opinion? What's the kind of question? Is it a leading question? Is there an implicit bias behind the question? Those things we need to deal with in a lab or in a practice environment, because when we are in service with the actual group, we have to be even more careful of holding our space in a neutral space with everyone. If that makes sense? So I've learnt this skill of stepping back as a way of managing my derailers."

Vinay Kumar is the founding Director of C2C OD, where he enables organizations and their talent to be more effective. He is also the global chair of the International Association of Facilitators, and has held leadership and management positions in the worlds of education and banking.

In this episode of Control the Room, I talk with Vinay about listening skills, elephants, and patience in facilitation. Listen in to hear what small, nuanced actions a facilitator can take to leverage their team's fullest potential.

"Well, with this pandemic, I decided I'm going to buy a Nintendo Switch. And I bought the Switch, and I'm very excited because everybody talked about Animal Crossing, and I was like, "I can't wait to play." And "I can't wait to play Mario Kart." And so, I got my Switch, and years ago I had carpal tunnel issues in my right hand, and so I started doing a lot of things with my left hand. And when I use this controller, after a while my hand starts to hurt. And I just think, "There's no accessible controller for the Switch." There is for Xbox, but I did actually just find an accessible controller that can lay flat, but it's only available in Japan at the moment for the Switch. I was like, "Why isn't this available in America?" I mean, so, give me the options, right? Just give me the options to do things differently."

Regine Gilbert is an Industry Assistant Professor at NYU, and the author of Inclusive Design for a Digital World: Designing with Accessibility in Mind. As a UX designer, she has educated peoples domestically and internationally concerning the value of widening the boundaries of what we deem possible, and necessary in design.

In this episode of Control the Room, I talk with Regine about Nintendo, VR and accessibility as a byproduct of observation. Listen in to see how awareness fuels innovation and inclusion for an audience that needs it. 

"Well, it's funny you say that, because the biggest issue I find is that people overestimate their ability, simple term is cultural competence, but more accurately is, they overestimate their ability to navigate across cultures effectively. They think they're in one place, because they made an investment. They're super excited about this work. They know it's the right thing to do. They made the business case for it. They're totally invested. However, they don't have the skills to actually navigate those conversations effectively. When subjects around race and racism come up or other issues, they find themselves using a lot of their lizard brain where they're fighting, fleeing or freezing. And so when those conversations come up, their ability to actually navigate is really diminished because they haven't figured out for themselves personally how to sort through the moving parts they're going on."

Kazique Prince is the Founder & CEO of Jelani Consulting LLC, where he works with businesses and nonprofits as a DEI consultant. He also serves as the senior policy advisor and education coordinator for the City of Austin's mayor, Steve Adler, and has launched a nonprofit called Courage Equity that's aimed at funding educators who focus on cultural fluency.

In this episode of Control the Room, I talk with Kazique about empathy-driven inclusion, psychological awareness in the workplace, and how reconciliation affects all aspects of an individual's life. Listen in to catch a glimpse of what reality could look like if we shifted our collective focus from punitive scrutiny, to empowering practices.

"We live in such a polarized world right now, at least in the US, and I'm not going to get into that, but I think it is important that we be able to hear each other, really hear each other. Not necessarily agree, but how do we start to move a little bit closer to each other? And probably that's going to have to be through complicated, messy conversations and real listening."

In this episode of the Facilitation Lab podcast, Douglas welcomes Sandra Molinari, a workplace violence prevention specialist, to discuss her journey in facilitation and the importance of creating inclusive and safe spaces. Sandra shares her experiences working with diverse groups and the need to be mindful of cultural blind spots. They also discuss the significance of understanding participants' emotional states and the planning phase in shaping effective facilitation. Sandra emphasizes the importance of involving participants in the design process and the challenge of balancing structure and responsiveness. They conclude by highlighting the importance of listening, healthy disagreement, and the value of facilitation skills in creating effective and inclusive spaces.

"Seeing patterns in the data, that's where framing insights matter. And the massive amount of data that I've collected, what are the insights, the key insights that come out? What are the patterns that I can see, that point to an opportunity for the future? What are the patterns and problems that people are facing that tells me there is a need that needs to be solved. So all those questions about pattern finding and then framing insights or design research into usable forms that can frame your ideas for the future is critical, but that's where I've seen a lot of teams and organizations are struggling with.."

Vijay Kumar is professor emeritus at the IIT's Institute of Design in Chicago, and the author of 101 Design Methods: A Disciplined Approach for Driving Innovation in Your Organization. His entry into the field of design at its early developmental stages have provided him a comprehensive, sound understanding of method-based design that uses research to power insights and create breakthroughs for organizations around the world.

In this episode of Control the Room, I talk with Vijay about 101 Design Methods, vintage typewriters and framing insights. Listen in to see dynamic systems with design-based structures re-shape how we interact with the world around us.

"... developing a model around strategic conversation, which answers two critical questions of strategy, where are we going? And how will we get there? And constantly focusing on those two questions and understanding that. Within about 10 years, I learned that there was an underlying structure to these conversations. That there's an underlying predictable structure to the conversations. They're first divergent, then they're convergent, and then they're recurrent. They're iterative. And so, if you understand that there's an underlying structure to it, as a leader, if you understand that, then you can design and guide these conversations by asking questions."

Ed Morrison is the Director of the Agile Strategy Lab in North Alabama University, and the author of Strategic Doing. His years of experience with international and domestic problem solving at the intersection of rapidly shifting technological landscapes, endow him with a sharp mind and a dynamic worldview.

In this episode of Control the Room, I speak with Ed about team-based communication models, Strategic Doing, and transformative thinking for hopeless, uncertain futures. Listen in to hear Ed guide us through the questions, processes, and frameworks that will help in making the most of complex environments.

"That playbook is completely outdated, and it's dangerous. If you applied a 20th century mindset to a 21st century world, we're going to be much more hurt. How can we think about a way in which business and society can thrive together? We have to exist in a place of constant learning, a place of much more caring, and a place where we think about long-term value creation as opposed to short-term profitability growth"

Nancy Giordano is a strategic futurist, an author, and the founder of Play Big Inc. Her focus and vision bleed into PBI's own initiatives, where they focus on helping enterprise leaders meet the escalating expectations of a fast changing world.

In this episode of Control the Room, I speak with Nancy about updating strategic efforts, machine learning, and the tools meeting planners have at their disposal in bettering their teams' success. Listen in to hear Nancy break down the importance of bringing a relevant strategy to multi-faceted, complex teams.

"... part of what we're looking at is what you're describing with meeting airtime and inclusivity. There's also a whole other element to how AI can support the right behaviors in meetings and be able to, for example, not only take in information around who's talking, but things like voice level. When people are getting heated, when their body level changes, they shift from leaning in, to sitting back. Even temperature in the room, is it starting to literally get heated? We talk about conversations getting heated, but that actually has an impact on the temperature in the room that you're sitting in."

Nicole Baer is the Global Head of Marketing for Logitech's Video Collaboration Business. She's well versed in non-verbal communication and perception with regards to connection in meetings. Perceptive and empathetic, Nicole brings humility and awareness to every conversation, and invites other facilitators to do the same.

In this episode of Control the Room, I speak with Nicole about AI personal assistants, fighting the daily burden of cognitive load, and interjecting levity into the mundane. Listen in to see how she showcases the necessity of including aspects of normal social dynamics into our virtual environments.

"Sometimes we're blinkered. We think we know what our project should be, and we think we know why we're doing it, but we miss out on a whole area of opportunity simply because we're just too blinkered to see it. So giving people that 'get out of jail free' card can open ourselves up to some opportunities that we might not otherwise realize."

Ben Aston is a digital project manager and founder of both Black & White Zebra and The Digital Project Manager. He is passionate about understanding customer needs through design research, identifying opportunities based on those insights, and empowering designers and technologists to create solutions. Ben is driven to develop and uncover new opportunities for clients, establishing strong connections with their customers through product solutions that create lasting value.

In this episode of Control the Room, Douglas speaks with Ben about improving meetings through connection, bringing back lost momentum, and unlocking opportunities we may not yet see ourselves. Listen in to hear the key questions Ben asks his team to create positive, impactful outcomes and uncover opportunities for his clients and customers. 

"People are feeling really overwhelmed and, of course, moving between Zoom meetings, and feel like they're not having those opportunities between meetings to really connect with each other. And so when you're saying, and I love the mantra, "Get the work done in the meeting," work is social and work is playful, and so you need to have opportunities for that in the meeting."

Hailey Temple is the Learning Experience Lead at MURAL. She's involved herself in on-side corporate design, and has  Enthusiastic and compassionate, Hailey challenges facilitators to approach meetings and constituents with honesty and authenticity.

In this episode of Control the Room, I had the pleasure of speaking with Hailey about injecting humanity into our meetings, widening the boundaries of your understanding and creating spaces for all to flourish. Listen in to see how her unique experiences in learning create avenues of breakthrough and change for herself, and those around her.

"I've always loved how do you do things, very tool or method-oriented person. Getting there, I think the accomplishments or the path toward it was always kindling, always maintaining that curiosity about what is it that helps people shape their future strategically with others...I think it's that if there was any one thing, it's following a thread, following a hunch from the very first position I had and an interest in strategy and shaping the future."

Keith McCandless, co-developer of Liberating Structures, specializes in working with groups to unleash creativity, discover opportunities, and build on momentum. He calls himself a structured improvisationalist.

In this episode of Control the Room, Douglas speaks with Keith about goat rodeos, grief walking, and prototyping responses to unsafe behaviors. Listen in to find out what's giving Keith hope right now.

"The moment I became conscience that I was operating from a certain script, being the instrumental script, I started my own developmental journey, both in the domain of social-emotional intelligence and maturity and on the other side in looking at thought structures in teams and in groups and seeing how the scripts that I was using implicitly and the maps that allowed me to take perspectives, to integrate perspectives in teams and in all kinds of communications, hindered me and how I could break out of those patterns."

Jan DeVisch is an executive professor at Flanders Business School, where he teaches organizational development and human capital design. He is also managing director at Connect and Transform, where he helps teams and organizations cope with increasing complexity.

In this episode of Control the Room, Douglas speaks with Jan about reducing reality into logical categories, software that can help facilitators pre-assess a team's communication patterns, and resistance as a concept invented by the facilitator. Listen in to find out how to level up your facilitation skills through scientific research in the field of adult development.

"I think [the students] have found some ownership in taking charge of their education. I think students right now are showing up and saying, I need X, Y, and Z in order to succeed. And they're really finding their voice. I think they're able to find their voice and say, this is my education. This is my future on the line. I'm having to deal with X, Y, and Z at home, but I still need to continue to thrive academically."

Kristin Fulton is the Development and Operations Manager for Schools That Can, a national education nonprofit that is building an education to employment pathway for students in low-income schools.

In episode 24 of Control the Room, Douglas speaks with Kristin about closing the opportunity and skills gap, teaching confidence, and the tipping point at which students become leaders. Listen in to find out how Kristin utilizes her MFA in Acting in her work with Schools That Can.

"And it seemed to me that so many of the problems and issues that we face in the world were down to this increasing connectivity, increasing complexity that we weren't really suited to deal with. And so it dawned on me that conversation was the tool that we could use to make better sense of the world."

David Gurteen, director of Gurteen Knowledge, is best known as the creator of the Knowledge Café – a versatile conversational process to bring a group of people together to learn from each other, share experiences, and make better sense of a rapidly changing, less predictable world.

In this episode of Control the Room, Douglas speaks with David about street epistemology, virtual knowledge cafes, and David's interest in astrophysics. Listen in to find out how conversation can help us make better sense of the world.

We are excited to announce that Control the Room is now the Facilitation Lab podcast!

"What we need to figure out though, is what is our relationship to these boxes on our computer that we're locked into for so many hours a day. I think it's time for us to just acknowledge that no human being should be in front of a screen for eight to 10 hours a day, that's just not healthy."

Christina Wodtke is the author of the best-seller Radical Focus, which uses the power of story to build a new approach to OKRs, as well as The Team that Managed Itself and Pencil Me In. Christina currently teaches at Stanford in the HCI program in Computer Science. She speaks worldwide about humanity, teamwork, and the journey to excellence.

I had the pleasure of having Christina as a guest on this episode of the Control the Room podcast. We speak about influencing the influencers, psychological safety online, and re-evaluating our relationship with our computers. Listen in to find out why it's okay to miss your OKR's.

"Working with children gives me an opportunity to begin introducing the power of 'I become who I practice being,' so that as they're wiring this neurology, there's more awareness on, well who do I want to be? What's the impact of who I am on a group experience? What's the impact of who I am and how can I reflect on that?"

Solomon Masala is the co-founder of consulting firm Source Consulting Group. He has over 25 years of experience in team-building and leadership development in almost every sector. Charismatic and full of energy, Solomon engages participants with a kinesthetically-oriented approach to facilitation.

In this episode of Control the Room, I had the pleasure of speaking with Solomon about mindfulness, how we show up for people, and the true heart of humanity. Listen in to find out how changing the way you sit in front of a screen can affect your ability to connect with other human beings.

"Through my continued research, I realized there's a way you can blend and merge identities. And actually that's your truest form of yourself when you're in the intersections of multiple identities. And that's the hybrid." Sarabeth Berk

Sarabeth Berk, Chief Creative Disruptor of More Than My Title, is a researcher and innovation strategist demystifying the human experience. She is known for her research on the hybrid professional - people with multiple professional identities who integrate talents together and bring unique value to employers and clients.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Sarabeth about the professional identity crisis that inspired her research on the hybrid professional, the increasing demand for hybrids in the job market, and how you can network to learn someone's identity rather than their position. Listen in to find out if you might be a hybrid professional.

Show Highlights

[0:59] Sarabeth's professional identity crisis

[6:25] Jobs of the future will always become commonplace

[16:17] Emerging hybrids vs established hybrids

[23:00] Identity work & being seen

[26:25] Gaining clarity of self through misunderstanding

[31:21] How to network with identity in mind

Links | Resources

Sarabeth on LinkedIn

More Than My Title

Are You a Hybrid Professional? Sarabeth's TEDx Talk

About the Guest

Sarabeth Berk is a creative disruptor and innovation strategist who demystifies the human experience. As a researcher, she is known for her research on the hybrid professional - people with multiple professional identities who integrate talents together and bring unique value to employers and clients. Sarabeth is currently the Chief Creative Disruptor of More Than My Title, a professional coaching agency in Denver, CO that helps clients discover their truest professional identity.

Voltage Control is a facilitation agency that helps teams work better together with custom-designed meetings and workshops, both in-person and virtual. Our master facilitators offer trusted guidance and custom coaching to companies who want to transform ineffective meetings, reignite stalled projects, and cut through assumptions. Based in Austin, Voltage Control designs and leads public and private workshops that range from small meetings to large conference-style gatherings. 

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Voltage Control on the Web

Contact Voltage Control

Intro: Welcome to the Control the Room Podcast, a series devoted to the exploration of meeting culture and uncovering cures for the common meeting. Some meetings have tight control, and others are loose. To control the room means achieving outcomes while striking a balance between imposing and removing structure, asserting and distributing power, leaning in and leaning out, all in the service of having a truly magical meeting.

Douglas: Today I'm with Dr. Sarabeth Berk. Dr. Sarabeth Berk is a hybrid professional, who also researches hybrid professional identity. She's also the author of More Than My Title. Welcome to the show, Sarabeth. 

Sarabeth: I'm so glad to be here. Thanks, Douglas.

Douglas: So, tell us a little bit about how you got started in this work you do, this notion of hybrid professional identity. Where did that even come from?

Sarabeth: Yeah. It's been a wild journey, and it really started with that age-old question: What do you do? And I was going through my own career-change transition and trying to figure out what my next move was. And when people asked me, "What do you do?" I just struggled. I didn't know who I was. I wanted to be seen as more than my current job, and at that point, I was a teacher, and I was ready to break out. I wanted to transform systems and do more strategy and design and innovation work. And so essentially, I was having a professional-identity crisis. I didn't know who I was. 

And that led me onto this big research journey and interviewing a lot of people and starting to understand, what is this notion of professional identity? We just don't talk about it. And I looked at existing research. But what was fascinating to me the most was when I talked to other people, I thought they had it figured out and that I was the one that was confused, and this was a problem only I experienced. And that was so far from the truth. I quickly realized that people, many people, are more than their job title. That's just this kind of generic way that we give ourselves a frame and a label. And everyone I spoke to was so much more. So it gave me a sense of ease and peace to realize, oh, my gosh. Okay, it's not only me trying to figure out my identity. 

And then it started to open up a lot of new questions and thinking of, why don't we talk about this, and why is it so hidden that people do many things. But beyond that—here was the real kick—I realized I have multiple professional identities. I was an artist and a teacher, and I was becoming a researcher, and I loved design. I probably had a handful of others. But I didn't want to be just one identity at a time. When I took a job, I didn't want to just be hired as the designer or the researcher. I loved using all of those identities together. 

So through my continued research, I realized there's a way you can blend and merge identities. And actually that's your truest form of yourself when you're in the intersections of multiple identities. And that's the hybrid. 

So that's sort of my short story on how I happened upon it. But now that I've unlocked it and I'm sharing it with other people that are trying to figure out how do they get their next job or how do they really explain and articulate what their value is, this notion of the hybrid is just the game changer, and I'm so glad people are liking it.

Douglas: You know, I personally resonate with this a lot because my degree that I obtained in college was entitled multidisciplinary studies because I didn't want to be in school and get four different majors, but I wanted to study a lot of different things. And in fact, I had spent a lot of time in computer-science-type stuff in high school but enjoyed it so much I was just, like, figured that stuff out. I want to go study other stuff. And so I think I personally carved out this journey where there wasn't this one to one between my degree and my job. And I think a lot of folks, that's the classic route. And I felt a little bit different early in that journey. But it seems like it's more and more, we're finding whether you're a product manager or a facilitator or just this podcast is dedicated to, there are so many roles out there where you can't just go and get a degree in that role. And in fact, it takes a very diverse and well-rounded background to make you excel in the role.

So I'm just kind of curious. How much do you think it has to do with these new types of roles that of themselves are not super well-defined. They're kind of hybrid in nature.

Sarabeth: I love everything you just framed because the truth is you're not alone. A lot of people are not the exact thing they went to school for or got a degree in, and they've changed jobs and accumulated so many talents over time that they are like, yeah, what am I now? And I just wrote a really popular blog post a couple weeks ago that looks at this issue of job descriptions and positions and the way that roles are being named. 

One that really stood out to me is a company called Jump, and they do a ton of design and design-thinking-type work. And they were hiring a person to be an innovation strategist, which is something that resonates with me. And what I loved in the job description is the first thing they wrote is, Are you a hybrid thinker? They call that out. And then below that, they described it as someone who's one part a humanist, one part technologist, one part anthropologist and filmmaker, entrepreneur. They kind of listed these identity mashups that nailed it for me because companies are starting to realize they need someone that is multidisciplinary or multifaceted. And that's actually the value when you can find a person with this crazy combined skill set and identity set.

Douglas: You know, as someone who's hired a lot of people over the years, I hear that and part of me is reminded of this really, I would say, treacherous territory of carving out this unicorn that maybe doesn't exist, and then you have these unrealistic expectations on finding the person. But I think as the job market or the pool gets more and more sophisticated and people have more and more experience, these unicorns do tend to, they're out there. 

Sarabeth: Yeah.

Douglas: And so I'm just kind of curious of your thoughts on that.

Sarabeth: Yeah. It's that notion that the jobs of the future will eventually become commonplace today. So an example of that would be a social-media manager. We never knew we needed that role 10 years ago. That was really outlandish and exotic. And now it's so normal that multiple people have that in their job description underneath other duties. And I think now we see things like a DevOps manager. Well, that's hybrid. You're doing development and operations. Or even a data scientist. What is that? That's a hybrid title that now is becoming more normalized because we're like, yeah, of course, you have to look at data scientifically with other methods and insights behind that. 

So I think it's that notion that when things are hybrid, I'll use more of a product example for a second. When CamelBak created a backpack that had a water-bottle bladder inside of it, well, what the heck do you call that? That was a new product that combined two existing functions. And they named it CamelBak. 

And that suddenly caught on as the new way to call that object. Well, the same thing goes for people in roles. We don't know what they are until we sort of adopt it and get used to it. So I believe the unicorns are out there. We just don't have enough language to define them.

Douglas: Yeah. It's interesting. It's like, are we tapping into an emergent phenomenon or really just dreaming up something that some really crazy custom-fit jigsaw-puzzle piece that would just help our organization? Or are we tapping into some trends that are just starting to emerge?

Sarabeth: Probably all the above.

Douglas: Yeah. I think the risk is when we overfit that jigsaw puzzle, and it's like, oh, here's this thing that's like—does that thing even exist? Maybe that's two different people.

Sarabeth: Yeah. No, and that's part of the art and the science of this, so thanks for putting that into perspective. We can't say we need someone that is the jack of all trades and an expert in everything, because that's not realistic. 

So my quick framework is that there's three types of professionals: people that have really one type of expertise, I call that singularity. People that have multiple things they do for work, I call that multiplicity. And then the hybrid is somewhere in the middle, where you're blending and combining multiple expertise as well as multiple areas of generalists. And so it's sort of fuzzy.

And so people say if you're a hybrid, then you're not an expert. And actually, I disagree. I think you're an expert in your own hybridity, because in that emergent space—I love that word you used—and you're in the intersection of multiple identities simultaneously, that's an expertise no one else can replicate. 

And to your point a moment ago of, is it too crazy to ask for someone to be all these things? Yeah. I think it is. So when I work with people one on one or in groups, I say you have to first have a ton of self-awareness and know what are your core professional identities, the two, three, four at the most, that are really the ones you're best at. They light you up. You want the world to know you for. If you stop doing any of those tomorrow, you'd feel like part of you is missing. Once you land on those two, three, or four, that's what makes your hybridity. That's kind of the ingredients of a mixture. So, yes, you probably can do more than those three or four identities, but that's not going to be the best use of who you are as a hybrid. Where I'm trying to go with this is that there is sort of—a hybrid needs to just be a certain set of components. It can't be everything. Does that make sense?

Douglas: Absolutely. And I think that was the risk I was trying to point out to folks that wanted to tap into this phenomenon is temper your expectations. We can't just sit there and just conjure up the most perfect combination of skills and experience, because the more things you layer on, the less the probability that someone in the world has accumulated those things and is available and is interested in working with you.

Sarabeth: Yeah, that's true. And people are fluid and dynamic, and as the workforce is shifting, people are changing industries. And so once you start not just getting new jobs, but you're going from finance into healthcare, into tech, now you have this whole different set of who you are and how do you articulate that value. And I think that's what I'm trying to help people discern is you need to tell a story of the relationships between the different identities you have.

Douglas: I love that. Gosh, that brings up a lot of stuff for me. I was even thinking about internal family systems. But this notion of fluidity is really fantastic. And maybe the advice to hiring managers, and the thing I would probably internalize, is that if we're hiring people that are hybrid or have that hybrid affinity, it means that we can benefit from that fluidity and adaptability because they realize that they have this growth mindset and they are accumulating new skills. And so even though they're not this unicorn, maybe they're missing a few pieces, then they're going to grow into that, and they can adapt and they're not just fixed into this identity of who they are and what they do.

Sarabeth: Absolutely. Identity is a really big spectrum, and we change depending on context and time of our lives. We are not the same individuals that we were 10 years ago, you and I. We have different tastes and interests and hobbies and probably even friends. So why would we ever think that our career stays stagnant too?

Douglas: Mm. Also, just kind of tying this back to meetings and facilitation and also your comment around people saying that hybrids aren't experts, I would say that my interpretation of that would be hybrids are experts at gluing things together, because you may have—and in fact, a hybrid could be a deep expert in two things, and they're gluing together a bunch of other things. But even if they're not super-deep expertise in whatever is the topic at hand, their deep expertise might be somewhere else, even if they have the ability to span these different spectrums, it means they're going to be able to glue together the deep knowledge that others on the team have, and that is super powerful. And I would argue that hybrids make great facilitators because our role is to glue together, it's to understand enough to say, hey, what you're saying is contradicting this other person, even though you seem to be agreeing. And that takes some hybridity. You have to understand enough of each of these things and have enough experience to be able to call on that knowledge and apply it in a way that everyone can kind of come to the table and understand it.

Sarabeth: Yeah. That's really a great insight and observation. I agree that hybrids definitely have one foot in different worlds, and so they get to be these master translators, which isn't the route of facilitation to make it easier. And so you're the person transferring knowledge between disciplines or industries or sectors or departments or whatever to help them make it easier of, What are these languages and ideas and concepts we're doing? How do they fit together?

Douglas: Yeah, one thing I also say is one of the superpowers of a facilitator is really quick synthesis, to be able to take a bunch of inputs in, synthesize them, make some meaning of it, and then kind of spit it back out for the group to react to. And so there's a balance between totally mirroring what you're hearing but also synthesizing some things to help spur and move things ahead. And I think a lot of, I would say, varied and diverse background and perspective can really make that synthesis easier, because it's not about necessarily how fast your brain is processing stuff. I mean, sure, there's an element of that. But if you have different models and contexts that you can draw on, it definitely reduces the need for your brain to have to go into hyperdrive.

Sarabeth: Yeah. I love what you're saying. That was one of the findings I had in looking at hybrids, and where does hybridity show up? And hybrids are masters at pattern recognition and meeting making. And you just said that in your own words.

Douglas: That's fantastic. You know, I'd written down complexity earlier, for a different reason. And I think you could kind of map this stuff onto a Cynefin framework even, based on a few things I've heard you speaking about today already. Early on, before hybrid, we have a very simple view of the world. It's like I learn to do something, and I do it. And then as I learn more and more difficult things and get more and more specialized, moving into the complicated domain, that hybrids really thrive in this complex domain, where things are adapting and changing, and we have to respond to them. And we have that fluidity that we can lean on so that if something new comes at us, we don't just get knocked off. We kind of just, we remain in balance.

Sarabeth: Yeah, definitely. I think hybrids are very adaptable, and they tinker and invent and hack, and they see the standard process, and they know how to kind of tweak it or make it better or change it completely.

Douglas: The other fascinating thing about the Cynefin model is that in between the domains, because a lot of people look at it and think it's just a two by two. The lines between the domains is a domain in and of itself, so this disorder that you move through when you transition. And you were talking about these hybrids transitioning, and I think whenever we transition domains, there's some disorder. We have to, you know, like, Clark Kent can't just turn into Superman. He has to go into the phone booth and emerge as Superman. 

And I think that that in itself, I mean, there's two things I think of that might be interesting to unpack from your work, which was, do you see that there is a transition, an uncomfortable transition, as people start to learn? As they're moving from a simple, like, "I know this one thing. I'm starting to learn, build this other skill," it's like maybe there's some identity crisis starting to happen.

Sarabeth: No. I was completely agreeing. I have a table I created in the book I wrote, More Than My Title, where I talk about emerging hybrids versus established hybrids, because there is sort of this developmental thing that's happening as you're feeling the push and pull and tension of having multiple identities, but not understanding the relationship between them, how they fit together, and how to build that as the way you're working in the world. You're sort of stuck in this awkward phase. And there's a few different indicators I have of that. And one of it is this, I call it, crossover. It's like sometimes you know how to tie your identities together and you're in that zone of genius, and other times you don't. It's like you only are one or the other, and you haven't found that natural cadence or just natural ability to let it be simultaneous. 

And one thing that just my kind of artsy head that inspired some of my research findings was I was looking at paintings by Rene Magritte, and he is one of the ultimate surrealists. And he had one painting where it's a sandy beach, it's the seashore, and there's a doorway, just the frame of a door, and the door is open. And so you can walk through that doorway and get to the water or you can stay on the beach. It's sort of that moment of this invisible gateway between the two worlds. And that's my visual mental metaphor of us trying to figure out, How do we find these spaces of transition between the different parts of ourselves?

Douglas: It's amazing. As you were sharing some of that I'm starting to formalize some of, like you were helping me articulate where my head was going previously, which is I think there's two modes, maybe. One is as you're first exploring the land of hybridity, it's almost like going through puberty because it's like, wait a second. This is a real awkward transition. 

Sarabeth: Yeah.

Douglas: And as you start to become more hybrid, so you're developing different facets of yourself, when you're in that zone, I would imagine early on that fluidity isn't quite so fluid. Being able to shift between those modes may be more awkward. I'm actually taking this hat off, putting it on the table, and putting this other hat on, and it's a little clunky. I have to maybe reboot a little bit. But then more and more you do it, the more skilled you are of just blending between the two to where it's almost like a dance. Like, you don't even notice that you're shifting between these modes.

Sarabeth: Yeah. That's exactly right. The other tool that I brought into my work is this idea of developing your consciousness. Hybrids don't realize they're even hybrids. They have to learn that construct and realize, oh, my gosh, this might apply to me. And even once you learn the term, you still might not understand how it looks for you and what makes you a hybrid. 

Oftentimes when I speak to people that they're excited and this resonates, and they go, "Of course, I'm a hybrid. I do marketing and sales, and I'm a gardener on the side. And I love to do graphics and computer animation," but they don't understand how those things fit together or how they're using synergies and a marriage of all that. Then there's still that emerging phase. That's more multiplicity, in my mind, when you are just putting one hat on, taking it off, putting the next hat on. And the hybrid is literally wearing all the hats at once and has tentacles of skills. 

Let me give a clear, concrete picture of my hybridity in action. So actually, when I'm facilitating a meeting and I start to do either some visual recording, graphic facilitation, or in the moment ask people to take on roleplaying, to play out different personas of stakeholders that we're trying to imagine how would they experience this thing, those are moments when I notice big shifts in the room, and other people don't run meetings that way. That's me and my hybridity because the researcher is turning on, the designer's turning on, the educator's turning on, in that moment to get people to do things they don't normally do to make sense of information we're struggling with.

So that's kind of how detailed I push people to see themselves in these moments of their hybridity, to reveal it to themselves.

Douglas: You know, that reminds me of one of the thoughts that I had when we first met and I was starting to wrap my head around your work, and it was that this is in a way, is a really practical, pragmatic approach to personal branding.

Sarabeth: Definitely. It has that connection, which I think is just one of the outcomes of doing the work. So I didn't even really do my full hybrid introduction, but essentially I've designed my own title for my hybridity, and I call myself a creative disruptor because to me that encapsulates who I am in the intersections. And it's a unique name. It's not too out there or trendy, but it feels authentic and accurate, and it takes some practice and exploration to find that right combination of words. 

And what my "creative disruptor" title represents is that I'm comprised of being an artist, designer, educator, and researcher. Those are my four primary, or core, identities that mean the most and I have to use pretty frequently in the work I do. If I don't, I get bored or I stop doing that job, or other things happen, more disengaged.

So that's really kind of the building blocks of this work is having self-awareness of your identities, and then asking yourself, Who are you in those intersections, and what do you call yourself in that bullseye of your intersections? That's your hybrid title, which then becomes a beautiful personal brand that all of your history and work experience connects to.

Douglas: Yeah. I love this notion of authenticity in its purest sense, right? 

Sarabeth: Mm-hmm.

Douglas: A lot of times we hear that word thrown around, be authentic, etc., but I truly believe that if we're going to be great facilitators, we have to be authentic. And that means being true to ourselves and showing up in that way. And I love that your work is a tool for folks to do that self-reflection and think about, well, what are these elements that are critical? And I think in a way, it's not all that dissimilar than thinking about values as well. But I think that values is such an overused and diluted term that a lot of times people, especially when you're at the company and it's the things that are just hanging on the walls, and no one really lives by them. So I love it as a framework that helps us get to that same need, but it's not a bunch of handwaving stuff.

Sarabeth: Yeah. And one other thing I'll add to that would be I think it's about being seen, which ultimately is about belonging, right? And we know that's one of the steps to have safety and strong teams and trust is you have to feel like you belong and people understand who you are. And when we just walk around and know each other on teams or companies as you're the director of programs, you're the head of A.I., you do sales, I don't really know who you are, and I actually don't really understand your job. And I understand that we need a hierarchy of formal job titles, so I'm not pushing against disrupting and changing all that. But what I am saying and what I've started doing with more teams during workshops and companies is let's do some of this identity work to reveal your professional identity so your colleagues and peers see you the way that you want to be seen and know you for what you're best at. And that's more than just your StrengthsFinders or Myers-Briggs profile, which are other talents and skills. Your identity is something that just defines who you are and overarches your passion, your purpose, your skills, everything.

Douglas: I'm kind of getting into my nerd brain now on the facilitation, but I'm starting to visualize. It could be—we've been building a lot of MURAL templates for various activities and a lot of the things we would do in real life. And one of them—you mentioned StrengthsFinder—one of them is based on StrengthsFinders, and there was another one based on the books everyone's reading right now. So how do we, coming together as a team, visually kind of exciting each other around possibility or around vision, around the makeup or composition of the team—I think it'd be really fascinating to do some of this exploration as a team. What you're talking about is deeply introspective, and I'm sure you coach a lot of folks and help draw that stuff out—I can imagine teams helping each other draw it out because they see things in their teammates that their teammates might not see in themselves or aren't recognizing. They're a little blind to it because it's things they do but don't perceive or don't say about themselves.

Sarabeth: I just have a huge smile on my face right now. You couldn't have said it better. I think doing this work in collaboration with your teammates is one of the best ways because they mirror back to you how they see you and help you realize the truer parts of yourself that maybe you've never given a name to or wouldn't have called out. Like you said, they perceive things and they can reflect it back. Yeah, I think that's really powerful.

Douglas: I think one of the thoughts I was having, too, is one of my favorite ways to dispel a conflict is something I call roles and coffee, and as two people were kind of at loggerheads or whatever. And I don't feel like—usually you can tell as a leader, is something bad going on here, or they just misunderstanding each other? Ninety percent of the time, it's just some silly misunderstanding stuff. And so I'll just tell them to schedule a coffee. And there are no rules besides one simple rule that they can't talk about work or the task that they're doing. They can't discuss the project or anything. They can only discuss what they think each other does from a role standpoint. "I want you to sit down and tell me what your role is. I'm going tell you what your role is, and you're going to tell me what my role is. And you have to sit and listen." 

Sarabeth: Yeah.

Douglas: And it can be very eye-opening to hear how people misunderstand what you do and what you bring to the table.

Sarabeth: Completely. That is the beginning. I have a workbook that complements my book, and the first section is, What do other people say you do? Talk to your colleagues. How does your partner or family members describe what you do? How does a child, how does a neighbor? Trying these different scenarios to understand how people interpret and perceive you and what words they're using. And if they're totally vague or uncertain, that's also evidence as well. And it's not that everyone has to be super crystal clear, because it is really hard to define all the different things we do. But if people are that fuzzy and if you're not telling a story that's articulating the way you want to show up in the world, then other people won't get it either. So that's kind of why I think this is a really big deal of how you describe your hybrid identity and find language that you believe in will start to cascade to your boss, to clients, to everyone. 

And the more I've talked about being a hybrid, I've noticed people start to introduce me that way, or they've walked up—I had a boss one time say, "Hey, Sarabeth. Are you able to use enough of your identities in this job? How is that going for you?" And that blew me away because when would you ever expect a manager or a boss to say that and to make sure you're feeling supported and seen? And I think the more we talk about this explicitly, the more we feel, wow, this is really what's been missing from our lives.

Douglas: That's amazing. You know, and it's like I think that to me the fascinating piece is absolutely others are going to help you identify things that you may not realize that you might want to kind of craft into that narrative. They may actually also point out things that they're perceiving that are incorrect or that maybe we're presenting things in a way that it's confusing or people are reading into it in ways that we don't want. We can repair those things as well.

Sarabeth: Oh, definitely. Yeah. If people are reflecting back to you—like, I used to get called the design-thinking guru a lot, and it was kind of just a fun, easy way for people to reference me. But that kind of drove me crazy because that's not who I saw myself as. Like, yes, I know design thinking, but that wasn't the way I wanted to show up in a room or be introduced. So, yeah, that was good feedback where I needed to tailor and tweak how I introduced myself and how I talked about myself. And then it started to shift that introduction when other people said it.

Douglas: Absolutely. I had the same thing happen to me when I first started Voltage Control, because I was doing a little bit of fractional CTO work, as well as facilitating and running design sprints. And I would tell people that, right? I would tell them that hybrid nature of, like, I'm a fractional CTO, and I do design sprints. 

It is fascinating to me how people would always remember one or the other. And so I'd either get introduced as the CTO guy or the design-sprint guy. And as I was doing less and less CTO work, it was even more frustrating because people would still introduce me as this fractional CTO. And it's like, "Well, I'm not really doing that as much anymore." It's a struggle, and it's real.

Sarabeth: Yeah. And it just takes practice and experimentation. I tell people to keep iterating. It took me a while to even figure out my hybrid title. And if you don't have one, if that's daunting, because going into these intersections, I will say right now, is the hardest work. People get really lit up, and they're like, "Oh my gosh, you just want me to draw this Venn diagram and look at my overlapping identities. I love it. That's genius." And then they start scratching their heads and go, "Oh, my god, I don't know how to do that." But if you just want a starting point, even just saying, "Hey, I'm a hybrid. I work at the intersections of, in my case, being an artist, designer, researcher, educator," that is a nice gateway, and that's a really simple way to start reinforcing this stuff. But I agree. It takes a while for people to actually, like, hold onto it and remember it.

Douglas: So, I want to come back to something you mentioned in passing earlier as this kind of a setup to kind of explaining this work. And it really struck me, it brought me back to a place that I haven't been in a while, which is bumping into people in a networking environment or maybe at a party, and you just met them. You didn't get a really good intro. And the easiest, the most mundane question is, So what do you do?

Sarabeth: Every time. Yep.

Douglas: Yeah. And so, you know, I always kind of feel awkward with that question, but it was the thing I always wanted to ask, but I felt like an idiot asking it. And so now that we've advanced, well, (a) it's kind of difficult to even find ourselves in networking situations these days, but I guess in your work, have you found more interesting questions, better ways to probe into this hybridity and to learn more about people rather than, "So what do you do?"

Sarabeth: Oh, definitely. I mean, a quick one that's not as much identity related is just, What do you love to do? Adding that love part shifts it more into hobbies and extracurricular activities. But if you're trying to stay on a professional note and especially hybrid stuff, I'd say, "What do you call yourself?" You know, that right away, I ask people, "What is your identity?" or just "What are your different professional identities?," which right away assumes people are more than one thing. Some of those might need a little bit more contextualization to help people not feel affronted or thrown too far off. You might say, "Hey, I realize we're more than our job titles. Tell me about the different identities you use in your work." And shifting to an identity conversation could be interesting. So those are maybe the top three that just came out of my mouth.

Douglas: Yeah. As you were kind of sharing some of those, it reminded me my friend has a great prompt that I've totally stolen. And it's, What's lighting you up these days?

Sarabeth: Yeah. I love that.

Douglas: I find that people always have some really fun answers to that question.

So speaking of questions, questions are kind of, I think, the facilitator's Swiss Army knife. They get us out of a lot of trouble. They can kind of move us forward, etc.. So apart from just the breaking-the-ice, "I just met you" questions, what are some of the questions that you think are provocative or helpful when we're in meetings or just helping people work better together?

Sarabeth: Yeah. One of the top things I notice when I'm working with groups and we're problem solving is all the assumptions that they're holding onto that they don't hear and kind of those limited beliefs. So probably a few of my top questions I ask the most is, How do you know? You know, just asking them if they're like, "Oh, we don't need to research that. We already talked to those people and they said blank." And it's like, well, how do you know they really feel that way? Or what do you see that makes you say that? Getting really objective and moving away from their interpretations and subjective feelings so that they have to back it with actual fact and have a reality check and kind of question where did this story in their head start from? 

And probably the last one, it's sort of a loose tool, and I adjust this in so many ways. I could use it for an interview script or facilitation and brainstorming. But these four words, I think, are my driving, just ideas when I'm doing facilitating. And they are needs, beliefs, pain points, and desires. I'm constantly returning back to those to understand, What does a user need? What are they believing? What are their pain points and desires? And I just found if we can answer those, we can reveal the next best set of insights to get us moving forward.

Douglas: I think that's also true for the participants, too. Are we pointing that inward to what's going on inside the hearts and minds of the folks in the room as well as who this room is focused on solutioning for. 

Sarabeth: Mm-hmm.

Douglas: So I love that, yeah.

Excellent. Well, Sarabeth, it's been a pleasure chatting with you today. And I'm sure if everyone enjoyed this as much as I did, then they're eager to find out where they can learn more and maybe also think about—I'd love to hear what you might be interested in leaving the audience with.

Sarabeth: Ah, so many good nuggets. Douglas, you and I just have the best synergy. We could have talked forever. Let's see. So essentially the work I'm doing, go to my website, morethanmytitle.com. I just wrote a book with the same name called More Than My Title: The Power of Hybrid Professionals in a Workforce of Experts and Generalists, because essentially I think this is a movement of a hidden segment of the workforce, and I'm really trying to build awareness and give people practical tools to both help them with their own personal identity, but also to realize the workforce is made up of more than just experts and generalists. And then you can find my workbook, and I have online courses. So my goal is just to help people activate and learn about themselves and their identity. 

And my takeaway for your audience today is my favorite question, which is, Who are you in the intersections of your multiple professional identities? And when you can start to answer that question, you are going to see a whole new side and really just version of who you are in the world.

Douglas: Fantastic. Sarabeth, it's been a pleasure chatting with you. And I'm really excited to see how the listeners take this work to heart and what they find as they start to explore new identities. So thanks so much for being on the show, and we'll talk again soon.

Sarabeth: I hope so, Douglas. I'd love to come back anytime. Just keep me on your radar. You're great. This is wonderful. Thank you.

Outro: Thanks for joining me for another episode of Control the Room. Don't forget to subscribe to receive updates when new episodes are released. If you want more, head over to our blog, where I post weekly articles and resources about working better together, voltagecontrol.com.

"Life is gray. It's not black and white. It's possible to admit that the FBI made mistakes and at the same time recognize the ultimate responsibility of Koresh to have led his people out peacefully, as we encouraged him to do every single day." Gary Noesner

Gary Noesner, author of the book Stalling for Time: My Life as an FBI Hostage Negotiator, retired from the FBI in 2003 following a 30-year career. During this career, Gary was named the first chief of the FBI Crisis Negotiation Unit. As a negotiator, he was personally involved in numerous high-profile crises, cases, and seizures, including the Branch Davidians in Waco, recently dramatized by the Netflix series.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Gary about the gray nature of life, what distinguishes wants vs needs, and the game-changing power of making adjustments at half-time. Listen in to find out how Gary's discomfort with conflict in his youth led to his career as a hostage negotiator for the FBI.

Show Highlights

[7:29] The fatal mistake of assuming that high rank equals expertise

[14:07] The realization that life is gray

[19:00] Saving the most lives possible

[22:29] Making adjustments at half-time

[26:40] Distinguishing between wants and needs

Links | Resources

Gary on LinkedIn

Stalling for Time: My Life as an FBI Hostage Negotiator

About the Guest

Gary Noesner, author of the book Stalling for Time: My Life as an FBI Hostage Negotiator, retired from the FBI in 2003 following a 30-year career. During this career, Gary was named the first chief of the FBI Crisis Negotiation Unit. As a negotiator, he was personally involved in numerous high-profile crises, cases, and seizures, including the Branch Davidians in Waco, recently dramatized by the Netflix series.

Voltage Control is a facilitation agency that helps teams work better together with custom-designed meetings and workshops, both in-person and virtual. Our master facilitators offer trusted guidance and custom coaching to companies who want to transform ineffective meetings, reignite stalled projects, and cut through assumptions. Based in Austin, Voltage Control designs and leads public and private workshops that range from small meetings to large conference-style gatherings. 

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Contact Voltage Control

Intro: Welcome to the Control the Room Podcast, a series devoted to the exploration of meeting culture and uncovering cures for the common meeting. Some meetings have tight control, and others are loose. To control the room means achieving outcomes while striking a balance between imposing and removing structure, asserting and distributing power, leaning in and leaning out, all in the service of having a truly magical meeting.

Douglas: Today I'm with Gary Noesner. Gary retired from the FBI in 2003 following a 30-year career, during which he was named the first chief of the FBI Crisis Negotiation Unit. As a negotiator, he was personally involved in numerous high-profile crises, cases, and seizures, including the Branch Davidians in Waco, recently dramatized by the Netflix series. He's also author of the book Stalling for Time: My Life as an FBI Hostage Negotiator. 

Welcome to the show, Gary.

Gary: Thanks. It's a pleasure to be with you.

Douglas: So, Gary, I'm always fascinated to hear how people got their start, especially in the world of facilitation. And I'm sure negotiators are no different. While there's certainly a course at Quantico, there's not readily degree programs, like, "Oh, I'm going to go become a negotiator or become a facilitator." It's a quite circuitous path a lot of people take. And I'm curious. All the way back to the Lakeland High School, you know, talking about some of those early situations you found yourself in, at what point did you really start to realize that you had this gift of kind of working with people?

Gary: Well, I think as an early age, I was always uncomfortable around conflict and always sort of stepped up to the plate to de-escalate confrontations and arguments, whether it's between friends or others. It just seemed like a natural and appropriate thing to do for me. So when I got into the FBI, after wanting to do that since I was young, I had no sense that anything about negotiation existed because it didn't when I joined. But when I first got in the early part of my career, the FBI had sort of taken on this hostage-negotiation concept that had been started by NYPD. And there's something about it that really attracted me, and I thought it fit my personality and skill set. So I got the early training, and it was an auxiliary function for me for many, many years. And eventually I became a full-time negotiator and chief of the Crisis Negotiation Unit for the last 10 years of my career. But it was very challenging, and, yeah, there's a lot of similarities with mediation, facilitation. It's all about building relationships and influencing people in a positive way. 

Douglas: And it must have been kind of—it's like coming full circle as you were one of the first to take the course, and then you ended up taking the program over. What did that feel like when you remember it? Like, what was that like?

Gary: Well, in those days, when I first got involved, the FBI, perhaps more so than today, played a pretty significant role in training police departments. Police departments didn't have a lot of money for training back then, so part of the FBI's mission was to provide it at no charge. And one of the areas, of course, was negotiation. It eventually became the thing we taught more than anything else, except for maybe firearms. And it gave me an opportunity to really interface with a lot of police officers in ways that I might not have had a chance otherwise. And that was a really valuable piece of my learning as an agent, as a human being. And, you know, I certainly got as much from those officers as I gave. It became apparent to me very quickly that the skills and the approaches we were teaching had a real impact. It wasn't theoretical. It allowed officers to exercise some specific skills to prevent violence and come home alive to their families. So immediately I recognized it as rewarding and meaningful and certainly something I always enjoyed.

Douglas: Something that really caught my eye—and I kind of can parallel it back to even the theme of the show, which is control, and how much control do we lean into, and how much do we back away from? And I really struck a chord with this notion of maintaining balance. And you were talking about managing yourself and the people around you. And in fact, I think there is a quote that really caught my eye, which was, if you cannot control your own emotions, how can you expect to influence those of others?

Gary: That's literally the first line that comes out of my mouth when I teach negotiations, because it's so true. I mean, if you want to influence others and yet you yourself are emotionally charged or dealing not in a logical, thoughtful, empathic way, then you're probably not going to be as successful as you would otherwise. So self-control is terribly important. And you tend to see people that perform at the highest levels in certainly law-enforcement negotiations are typically people who have a lot of self-control. 

And one of the chapters in my book, Stalling for Time, I start each chapter with a quote. And a quote I always like, it's a partial quote from Rudyard Kipling about if you can keep your head about you when all else are losing theirs. 

And I think that says a lot to me about the kind of person that makes a good negotiator and what is required. It's somebody that can think clearly in the midst of a situation where others might be so overcome with various forms of reaction that they're not optimally performing. You know, it's kind of like—I always do the comparison of a trauma surgeon. You know, when mass casualties are brought into an emergency room, the trauma surgeon, it's not that they're not human and don't see the damage that some people have suffered or perhaps been deceased, but they focus immediately on what has to be done, which is to save as many lives and determine which ones need their most immediate care. So they put those emotions aside so that they can function at an optimal level or highest level they can. And I think negotiations is very akin to that.

Douglas: Yeah. It reminds me of the, never confusing getting even with what you want.

Gary: Yeah. And it's a good phrase we used to use for our commanders because even law enforcement, somebody can be a fairly high rank and have a lot of different experiences in an agency. It doesn't mean that they've had a lot of experience managing with these kinds of crises. 

And law-enforcement officers are human beings, and when a perpetrator, particularly one that is maybe not a model citizen or somebody that may not have any attributes that we would find commendable, when they refuse to do what we want and they don't cooperate and they back out of promises, they engage in any number of problematic behaviors, you really got to maintain your self-control because if you respond and react to that, you may get even with them, but are you really accomplishing what your goal is, which is to get your way? And "to get our way" in the context of negotiation means we get people to peacefully surrender, to comply, to do what we think is not only in our best interest, but in their best interest. We don't want anybody to get hurt. So I found a lot of my career time was helping on-scene commanders and decision makers, chiefs of police, sheriffs, understand that concept. 

There's always an assumption that people of a high rank know how to do everything. And of course, that's a fatal mistake you can make, because they don't necessarily understand, especially—someone might be a great internist as a doctor, but can they perform brain surgery? Probably not. So, you know, just because you have the MD in front of your name doesn't mean you can do everything there is that could possibly come before you. So we have to know our limitations, and we have to understand that there are people who have more expertise that we probably would be wise to listen to.

Douglas: Yeah. It reminds me of your points in the book around just the crises within the crises and these other negotiations that have to happen. So you're managing quite a lot at the same time.

Gary: Yeah. I mean, and of course, I know we'll be talking about Waco shortly, but I got asked this on a recent interview, and I never really thought about it from that complexity point of view that while out there, I had three very distinct roles. I had to manage the negotiation team, maybe 15 or 20 people, and ensure that it was functioning properly and proceeding in a strategic way, the way I wanted it to. And at the same time, I had to convey what we wanted to the bosses and convince them to support the strategic approach we were taking, and that could often be a challenge. And then, last but not least, is dealing with David Koresh and all the unique issues and problems that he brought to the table. So, you know, you find yourself sometimes being the ringleader in a three-ring circus, you know, and trying to keep everybody functioning in the right way so we can achieve the outcome we want.

Douglas: Yeah. And speaking of Waco, let's talk about that for a moment. I was really curious to hear your thoughts on how well it portrayed the negotiation process, because from a storyline perspective, when I compare your book to the show, there's definitely some sensationalism on the Branch Davidian side. My depiction was that it demonstrated the conflict with the kind of more forceful approach and also just the kind of slow, intentional approach ya'll were taking. But I'm just kind of curious as far as, like, anything about the negotiation process that you felt was maybe skewed in the presentation.

Gary: It's a big question, and there's a lot of variables. Obviously, they bought my book to show the FBI side of the story and what perspective we had from outside looking in. And then they bought David Thibodeau's book—he was a surviving Branch Davidian—to get the perspective of someone inside looking out. And I liked that approach, to look at it from both angles. But specifically addressing the negotiation part, they got a lot of parts of the negotiation very right. What was the Hollywood dramatization part is they had my character doing all these things on his own, when in reality I'm leading the team, and there's eight, nine negotiators per shift. It's quite a complex and many-moving-part operation. So obviously, Hollywood doesn't want to pay those additional actors and introduce their characters and get the audience to know them. It's a whole different level of challenge, that they wanted to showcase Michael Shannon, who was one of the two main stars of the TV show who played me. 

Douglas: I got to say, if I'm ever played by anyone, I would say Michael Shannon wouldn't be a bad—that's not a bad deal to get.

Gary: I had seen Michael Shannon in Boardwalk Empire, that TV show. 

Douglas: Mm-hmm.

Gary: I was very impressed with him in that show, and I didn't even know his name, to be honest with you. And they came out and said, "This Michael Shannon's been hired to play you." And I looked him up right away. I said, "Oh, it's that guy." Well, he is just an incredible actor and human being. And, you know, during my time on the set, we had an opportunity to become quite friendly and had basically drinks and dinner every night while I was out there. And what an incredible actor. And he certainly was not trying to imitate me, but he captured the tenor of my philosophy, which goes back to your earlier question. I think those issues that came up, including the conflict between the tactical side of the FBI that wanted to take a different approach, I think that's very accurately reflected. Again, not so much in the exact form, but certainly in terms of substance. And he had it down very, very well and, I think, did an incredible job.

And let me add another thing, Douglas. You know, what I found is I felt that part of the reason I wrote my book was to educate current and future FBI leaders. And one of the things they need to be educated on is to understand not only the mistakes that the FBI made there, but the good things we did. And there were far more of those than not. But if someone doesn't write that down and record it, those things fall through the cracks and they're forgotten, and sometimes mistakes are repeated, and good behaviors are not appreciated or replicated. So I wanted to write it for that reason. And I also feel that in the FBI, we serve the American people. If we do something wrong, we should step up to the plate, admit what we did, demonstrate that we are making changes and corrections, and I think we owe it to the American people that we serve to do those things. So for all those reasons, I wrote that book and stand by the portrayal of the FBI overall. 

What I'm not quite as happy about is I think the portrayal on the other side of David Koresh came up a bit short for me because in reality, David Koresh was a far more dark and sinister, manipulative guy than was portrayed. The other great actor there—there were several of them—but Taylor Kitsch, who played Koresh, was just phenomenal. And he's such a nice guy in real life that I think that came through. And the producer, directors wanted to show the charismatic side of Koresh, what allowed him to attract followers and gain their total allegiance. And they did that, but I just don't think they showed sufficiently. They showed some dark things from him but not enough to my satisfaction. And I talked to them about that and tried to change that. But what you find out is when you sell your book to Hollywood or somebody else, you have some influence, but you don't have control.

Douglas: Yep. I think that echoes my read on it as well. It's a little sensationalized on the, like, kind of making people want to have a little more sympathy than maybe you would have if you were watching it go down from the sidelines.

Gary: You know, you're into facilitation, and I think the biggest takeaway for facilitators, if you want to use Waco as sort of an example, is the realization that life is gray. It's not black and white. It's possible to admit that the FBI made mistakes and at the same time recognize the ultimate responsibility of Koresh to have led his people out peacefully, as we encouraged him to do every single day. So you don't have to say, "Oh, these guys were all good, and these guys were all bad. The big old bad government came in and just wanted to kill people." I mean, it's actually intellectually lazy to take on those extreme views and not very realistic. There were good people in there who were practicing their faith, and there were highly dedicated FBI agents who wanted nothing but everybody to come out alive. So to make those general derogatory statements, I think, is just showing you haven't done your research, and you haven't read about what really happened, and you don't understand.

Douglas: Coming back to your goals for the book around really cementing the positive impact so they're not lost, it also jumped out to me when you were talking about these post-incident reviews and applying these lessons learned, it was interesting because it seemed like the popularity of the techniques within the FBI began to grow as you started to celebrate some of these wins. But the irony of it all was, maybe one of the ones that I was the most tickled by and I thought that you guys did such an amazing move was the steaks and gravy and cakes for the prisoners. So they're all having a Thanksgiving coma while the tactical thing went in, and clearly, not much credit was given after the fact for that.

Gary: Yeah. You know, it's funny. A lot of people in law enforcement are really not well versed on what negotiators do and why we do it. It's sort of a soft science, and you know there's more to taking action than here's a bad guy. We're going to do this to suppress them, arrest them, whatever we have to do. And, you know, when you do negotiate people out, which we do, in the 90 percentile, people say, "Well, it must not have been so hard. That guy must not have been that dangerous anyway." And they sort of make some excuses for it. Of course, I always want to say, "Well, you try doing it when somebody's life is on the line." But it's a hard thing to define. 

But just as in facilitation, we're building relationships, and people expect in these situations law enforcement to show up and be very confrontational, very demanding, very dictatorial. You will do this and you better do that, or we're going to do x, y, z. And instead they get somebody like me show up and say, "Hey, David. This is Gary. What's going on in there? I'm here to help. I don't want to see anybody get hurt." It's something they don't expect, and it gives us an opportunity to listen to them and to better understand what their motivation is, what their feelings are, how they interpret what has happened. It allows us slowly and steadily to lower the tension, to de-conflict and de-confrontate. And it allows us to begin eventually to have some influence over their behavior. And, you know, you typically will get to a point where a guy like David Koresh, which you didn't hear, he said, "You know, I just don't know what I can do. I don't know what to get out of, how to get out of what I got into." And you say, "Well, you know, here's some ideas for you, and here's something you might want to think about. And come out to jail and tell the world your side of the story. It needs to be heard." You know, those are things we did, and with some effect, we got 35 people out during the first half when I was there, including 21 children. That's a fact that many people forget. And it was not an easy task, and I'm very proud of it. I'm no less disappointed that we didn't get more out or everybody out. But you got to recognize that human emotion is a really challenging thing. And when there's been loss of life, like it was at Waco before we even arrived as the FBI, I mean, we were already in a deep ditch, and we got to dig out of that. It's pretty tough.

Douglas: You know, as you were speaking, it reminded me of some notes I wrote down around there's a lot of similarities between facilitation and negotiation, but there's some clear differences as well. We're not dealing with—life and death is usually not at stake. And the fundamental contradiction that you mentioned, which I thought was really fascinating, we don't really struggle with that so much, right? Like, we're all about building trust, but we never, ever have to bend the truth, or we never have to potentially send them into harm's way. And when I think about that story, was it in West Virginia, where Cheryl's husband, her and her child. And there was a lot of interesting dynamics there from the perspective of opening up options and demonstrating a future when you know that that future may not exist. So I'm kind of curious how that unfolds, just as you're kind of regulating your emotions.

Gary: Well, it's a tough case. And, you know, my book is about the importance of negotiation and how it is a tool that law enforcement should even use more, and then I start off the first chapter of my book with a situation where we have to use deadly force to resolve it. But it was a very dramatic case. It showed how even in those cases where the behaviors, the actions of the perpetrator are so extreme that our chance of getting them to comply and resolve it peacefully are pretty slim and, thereby, someone else is going to die. So then the negotiator has to segue into a role that allows you to become more supportive of the only option we have left, and that's using force. 

In Sperryville, I talked him into coming out to a helicopter, where a marksman ended his life. In the Talladega prison, that you alluded to earlier, we knew hostages were going to die, so we gave in and gave them a very sumptuous meal for the first time in eight days to sort of, excuse the expression, fatten them up and to lure them into a sense of victory and empowerment. And they took the bait and gorged on the food and basically went into sweet slumber that allowed the Hostage Rescue team to make a really terrific, well-executed entry and save everybody's lives. 

So there are times where negotiators have to recognize reality, that while we will be successful most of the time, there's nothing in what we do that guarantees success and certainly not 100 percent of the time. So we have to be adaptable and flexible. And the bottom line is, how do we save the most lives possible?

Douglas: Yes. That was the thing that was going through my mind in both of those scenarios because Sperryville, you saved a woman and her child; and then the prison example, I mean, how much more carnage would have happened if they would have been bracing for it?

Gary: That's right. I mean, if we had continued to deny them food until they released the hostages, I mean, I think we stood a good chance of having them kill one of the hostages to try to force us to do what they wanted, and that's one less human being alive today to survive that. So we have to take all that into consideration. And you make the best decisions you can, and you have to weigh all the facts. That's why we function—in Waco, I get a lot of credit operating by myself, but in reality, we're leveraging a team of very skilled and talented negotiators that bring a lot to the table from their training and their personal experience. We said, "What do you think? What are your ideas? Did you hear something I didn't hear?" And we really use that to full advantage to try to come up with the best approach that we think will achieve what we want in this particular incident.

Douglas: That brings to mind something else I wanted to bring up, which was the comment of you write good notes. And it really resonated with me because I often love to facilitate with a co-facilitator, and I find that when, especially when we're exploring really tough issues that, like, a team is really struggling, like, they can't seem to get past some personal issues, or they're just stuck on some things, when you're there working directly, it's sometimes hard to see the big picture because you're in the content, you're in the moment. But if you're on the sideline kind of just observing, you can see interesting things. So I was just wondering, is that similar in the negotiation world? When you're observing and writing these notes, do you find that you see things you wouldn't have seen if you were just on the phone, in the moment with them, like, watching every word, that kind of thing?

Gary: Yeah, absolutely. I think it's akin, Douglas, if you want to do a comparison, you think of a college or a professional football game. You ever notice how sometimes—not all the time—the second half is dramatically different from the first half? I mean, dramatically different? And you say, "Boy, what happened? That must've been a hell of a speech that the coach gave." Well, what it really was is the coaches up in the booth, they're studying what happened. They're making adjustments at halftime. It's coaching. It's not being personally involved in playing that position out on the field, but watching it and seeing where changes or improvements can be made to get the outcome we wanted. 

So negotiations is no different. If I'm the negotiation coordinator, or the coach, it allows me to listen to the interplay between the primary negotiator on the phone and the perpetrator, and then either in between calls or through passing a short, cryptic note, help nudge them to something I've seen that I think they may not have fully appreciated. 

The quote you're talking about is in Waco. This mother was very angry that her son was by himself. He had been released in the Child Protective Services, and we sent a video in of all the children. And she was very angry at us for his forlorn status. And, you know, rather than just trying to defend ourselves, I passed a note to John Dolan, our primary negotiator at the time, and he read it, and he smiled. And it just said, "You know, Kathy, what little Brian needs now is a hug from his mommy." And you could almost hear the arrow strike her heart. And, I mean, it was the one phrase that kind of brought it home to her that she was the missing piece. It wasn't us that was causing trauma to her child. It was the fact that she sent him out, and she stayed in to fight for Koresh, that it was her maternal responsibility to do this. And I think that shot hit home, and she came out the next day, and she was the first, essentially the first, adult that came out. And that was a very meaningful goal that we'd achieved.

Douglas: It really struck home for me when I read that because sometimes people aren't even necessarily self-aware or why they're upset. And if they're lashing out to you, and you can—it's almost like judo, which is redirect their energy, kind of become more aware of where the center is.

Gary: Yeah. You know, when you look at negotiations broadly—I'm not talking specifically Waco here—really, very few of them are actually hostage-taking events, where someone's being held to force somebody else to do something. Probably 90 percent of what police do around the country are dealing with highly emotionally charged situations. Often the jilted lovers, romantic situation gone bad; somebody holding an employer who fired them; an argument with a neighbor. There are people who are expressing anger, rage, and frustration who don't even have a clear goal of what they're trying to achieve. In other words, they've gotten themselves into something they have no idea how to get out of. And that's the role that the negotiator could play to try to understand those emotions and those drivers of their behavior, and to try to deal with those and diffuse those. That's what makes us successful. It's an approach that people don't expect from law enforcement. We certainly got that from the mental-health counseling community. And it's very effective in getting people to, for the first time, hear themselves what is driving them, and they may not appreciate, you know?

Douglas: Yeah. It reminds me of another note that I had taken around you had talked about the role of the negotiator was to help people express their fears, so allowing them to open up. And it was interesting because as I read it, it was definitely similar to things that we're trying to do in the workplace, because often people have these unstated fears. It's just they're not vulnerable enough to say it out loud because they're worried someone's going to judge them or maybe they haven't even figured it out yet. And so simply stating what might be clear to you but not to them and allowing them to acknowledge it or even just to say yes, I thought that was pretty interesting. 

Gary: You know, we used to talk about helping people understand the difference between wants and needs. So somebody involved in one of these situations may say, I want this and I want that, but it's our job to find out what they really need. Do they really need their job back? Or is it the loss of respect and the embarrassment of having to go home and tell your wife you haven't got a job anymore? I mean, you know, we don't always get that right. But that's kind of our goal, you know? And when we're communicating with them, and we say, "It sounds like you're really embarrassed by what happened," and if he hasn't articulated that and that, in fact, is what he feels, then we've just really scored some big points because he said, "Yes, that's exactly right. I'm embarrassed by having been fired." Well, that's important for us to know if we're going to deal with how he's viewing what happened to him.

Douglas: So, I had this—it was one of the last kind of sentences in your book. And I wrote it down because I thought it was pretty spot on. So I'm just going to read it, and then I'd love to just hear your thoughts today on this. But, "The happiest and most successful people are the ones that can remain calm in difficult times and put aside emotions like pride and anger that stop them from finding common ground. We need to be good listeners and understand the problems and needs of the other side."

Gary: Yeah. I guess it's never been more true than it is today in our very acrimonious political climate. And I'll bring up some recent events: the protests around the country. When people go out on the street and they carry signs and they're yelling and singing songs, whatever they're doing, what they're basically saying is, "We want somebody to hear us."

Douglas: Mm-hmm.

Gary: And if instead of finding ways to creatively listen to them, we simply attack them, we're probably not going to be successful. I suspect if you had 100 people in a room and 50 were pro-life and 50 were pro-choice, you could even have great meaningful discussion all night long, and at the end of the evening, you'd probably still have 50-50. But that's okay as long as we've avoided name calling and shouts and threats and violence and so forth. That's the major goal. It's a slow, steady process to try to create an atmosphere where we can listen to others and appreciate their point of view, even if it's different. And I just hate to see that today, particularly in our political environment, we seem to be going in the wrong direction.

Douglas: Yeah. I think that there's a real beauty—I had underscored the statement you made at the end of one of the early chapters, which was, "Listening is the cheapest concession we can make."

Gary: Yeah. It is. It costs you nothing. And, you know, you can acknowledge someone's point of view, "Let me make sure I understand. You're angry at your boss because he fired you. You don't think he appreciated your work, and you felt as though he mistreated you," and so forth and so on. I'm not saying to him, "Yes, I think you should kill your boss." I'm saying to him, "I understand how you feel about what happened." I mean, that's a powerful thing. If you think about it, the whole evolution of communication between human beings, and we're social animals, we want other people to understand what we're saying and how we feel about it. And if you do that as a facilitator, as a negotiator, you're going to be successful.

Douglas: Gary, it's been so great having you on the show today, and fun chatting and hearing about just the riveting life and career you've had in negotiation. Would you like to leave the listeners with any final words?

Gary: Well, I would suggest that people really work on listening. Listening is such an important tool. So when you go out, not so much these days with COVID, but when you have an opportunity to have a social interaction, pick out somebody you don't know very well or somebody that's a little quiet over in the corner or whatever, and go and talk to them and find out about their life and ask good questions. "Can you tell me more about that? That sounds very interesting. I'd like to hear about that hobby that you have or that trip that you took." And you'll find that people are far more interesting than you might have realized, that people have done and seen things that you had no idea, and you will learn a lot. And they, in turn, will appreciate the fact that you have taken the time and demonstrated the interest in learning more about them. It is a very, very powerful tool. 

And you know, what we all want to achieve is cooperation with other human beings, and we get that through being likable, plain old likable. Just be a person that strives to be likable and to automatically not think the worst of others and blame others, but seek to understand. Even the business guru Stephen Covey says, first seek to understand, then to be understood. So I'm not sure if that helps, but I would urge people to really make an effort at that. 

Douglas: Well, thanks again for being on the show. It's been great. 

Gary: My pleasure.

Outro: Thanks for joining me for another episode of Control the Room. Don't forget to subscribe to receive updates when new episodes are released. If you want more, head over to our blog, where I post weekly articles and resources about working better together, voltagecontrol.com.

"I think that's where my background in behavioral science really helps me because we are very often just standing in our own way. So it's uncomfortable to try to figure out the right question, because usually we satisfy this desire of instant gratification by just solving the easy question first."

Myriam Hadnes is on a mission to change the world, one workshop at a time. She is a behavioral economist, podcast host, and facilitator in the Netherlands. She is also the founder of workshops.work, a professional training & coaching company based out of Amsterdam, as well as the host of a podcast called Workshops Work.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Myriam about throwing idea parties, listening to what we don't want to hear, and the hidden reasons that we have for holding meetings. Listen in to find out why being a facilitator is a lot like being a yoga instructor.

Show Highlights

[6:10] Listening to what we don't want to hear

[12:27] Hidden reasons for having a meeting

[14:30] Idea parties

[20:27] Permission to interrupt

[29:23] Transition moments in virtual meetings

Links | Resources

Myriam on LinkedIn

workshops.work

Workshops Work Podcast

About the Guest

Myriam Hadnes is a behavioral economist, podcast host, and facilitator in the Netherlands. She is the founder of workshops.work, a professional training & coaching company based out of Amsterdam. She is also the host of a podcast called Workshops Work and a Project Facilitator with the European Investment Bank.

Voltage Control is a facilitation agency that helps teams work better together with custom-designed meetings and workshops, both in-person and virtual. Our master facilitators offer trusted guidance and custom coaching to companies who want to transform ineffective meetings, reignite stalled projects, and cut through assumptions. Based in Austin, Voltage Control designs and leads public and private workshops that range from small meetings to large conference-style gatherings. 

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Contact Voltage Control

Intro: Welcome to the Control the Room Podcast, a series devoted to the exploration of meeting culture and uncovering cures for the common meeting. Some meetings have tight control, and others are loose. To control the room means achieving outcomes while striking a balance between imposing and removing structure, asserting and distributing power, leaning in and leaning out, all in the service of having a truly magical meeting.

Douglas: Today I'm with Myriam Hadnes, a behavioral economist and host of Workshops Work, and an amazing facilitator. Welcome to the show, Myriam.

Myriam: Thank you for inviting me, Douglas.

Douglas: Absolutely. I've been really excited about having you on the show. And so let's start by hearing just a little bit about how you got your start. It's always fascinating to hear how facilitators found themselves in the role of bringing people together to work better.

Myriam: Yeah. And I think that's the beauty of the profession of facilitators, that it's nothing that you can study at uni or learn at school, so everyone comes with their own background and their own story. And usually we all had these moments where we realized how beautiful it is when we can help a group of people to co-create something or to come to a solution, and then started to become curious about the art of facilitation. And I think for me, it was similar. 

Now, looking back, I think that I've been facilitating for over a decade. So initially I had a career in higher education. I actually left uni only maybe three or four years ago, and I was teaching economics in Vietnam. And now I realized that what I did was I facilitated learning to these students. When I then moved to Luxembourg, I still worked in higher education, but in university strategy, and this was the first time that I really got close to what a workshop was, where we had world cafes with professors and students and lobbyists and ministers in order to design a university strategy. And I got fascinated. And so when I decided that it's time for me to leave the public sector, I moved to Amsterdam. 

It took me another year until I decided that I want to start my own business—no, that I had to start my own business because I was literally unemployable. I had no idea where to start because I was a public servant for my entire life. So I started to throw idea parties. I had a meetup, I invited people to show up with a challenge or a problem, and then at the group, we just brainstormed on solutions. And I was experimenting with different designs and different brainstorming techniques, all based on my background of behavioral economics and how our brain works. And suddenly people started to ask me for advice on how to design and facilitate workshops. Then they started to hire me to facilitate the workshops, and eventually they even paid me money to design workshops that I didn't even have to facilitate. I thought, "Hmm, maybe that's something that I can call my job." Yeah, that was the very beginning of it.

Douglas: It's really interesting that the tool that you started to lean on or bring to the question around, What should my business, or what should my job be? that tool itself turned into the job. That's really cool.

Myriam: Yeah.

Douglas: So, you know, I want to go back to that moment when you were in the world cafes and first getting exposed to this kind of thinking, this kind of working, these kinds of settings. Like, what did it feel like to experience that?

Myriam: I think for me, it's this excitement that I still have when I am in a room where new ideas emerge. And funny enough, it was before I left my job, I took Simon Sinek's WHY course, and what came up as my why is to bring people together so that new ways of being and doing can emerge. And back then, I was like, "Ah? What does that mean?" And today it perfectly describes my job. 

But it was back then, already, exactly that, that we, through intervention, through smart design, we could help people who initially didn't have a basis to communicate because they literally didn't understand each other. A social-science professor and a physics professor discussing about a model university, it seemed impossible. And then you put a minister next to it and someone from the finance lobby, impossible to come to common grounds. And then magic happened, and they could find a way to communicate and to actually inspire each other and find meaning and value in each other's perspective. And for me, this is magic, and that's why I really believe that we can change the world one workshop at a time, because it's through this tool that we can help people to communicate in a constructive way. 

Douglas: And the thing that comes to mind for me is it all just comes down to understanding. If we can understand each other, then we can build upon that foundation of understanding.

Myriam: Yes. Yes, totally. And understanding. I think our understanding of understanding very often is too narrow because we're thinking about language barriers. But it's not about the language. It's about, What do we understand when we use certain words?

Douglas: That's right. And mindset, even. 

Myriam: Yes. And how can we actually start listening to what we don't want to hear? I mean, I talked on my podcast to Oscar Trimboli, who mentioned how quick we can speak, how quick we can think—and I don't know the numbers anymore—but we're just not able to listen at the same speed as we can speak and think. So we only hear what we want to hear anyway.

Douglas: Wow. It reminds me of something I heard recently, which is, like, different cultures have different norms for how long a pause is acceptable. What I mean by that, or what I read or understood, was that in some cultures, even a half of a second is long enough to indicate that no one has anything to add. Or in another culture, it might be 10 seconds, no one has anything to add. Now, if you bring those two cultures together, that means the culture that has a snappier response time, the half-a-second response time, they're going to dominate the conversation because the people that are waiting 10 seconds are, you know, the other culture's going to assume they don't have anything to add.

Myriam: I love that example. And then translate this into the online world, where already every time that there is a pause, we get anxious, so we start asking, "Are you still there? Can you hear me? Hello? Hello? Can you hear me?" 

So the value of silence and thinking pauses, it's a totally different meaning suddenly. So we don't have the cultural differences only anymore, but we also have all the noise that is attached to it.

Douglas: That's right. And I think, you know, one of the things that's not talked about enough in the facilitation space is just the role the facilitator in setting expectations. And sometimes they're called ground rules or operating principles or operating agreements or whatever. But at the end of the day, we're setting expectations, even sharing the purpose before the meeting or setting down ahead of time to make sure people know what we're going to do or kind of what the arc of the event's going to look like. But if we're more intentional about that stuff, then, you know, silence, 10 seconds, that's what we're doing here.

Myriam: Yes, so true. If we know why we're here and what our goals are, then silence doesn't feel as uncomfortable anymore. 

Douglas: Especially if we know it's providing a function and we explain that.

Myriam: Yes. On online meetings, we have to be much more explicit than we used to be in order to take away this uncertainty and this anxiety. And I think regarding the ground rules, I totally agree with you, and I would even say that the thing that is even more neglected than the purpose is the role of participants. I don't know where I read it once, that the question, What is worse than being in a meeting? It's not being invited to a meeting. And I think it's hilarious because it describes exactly what happens in so many whatsoever. You have a meeting, you have a purpose, and then, "Oh, yeah, but if we invite him, then maybe we should also invite her because otherwise she complains," or "If he knows that we're meeting, then he also wants to be there, and we want to avoid a conflict, so let's invite them all." And then you have these overpopulated meetings, and then all these individuals who, actually, were not supposed to be there, they start with comments like, "Are we again discussing that? Oh, if you had asked me before, I could have told you," or "We are discussing about that for the last 20 years." And all of this can be avoided by just not inviting them, but nobody has the guts.

Douglas: Yes. And we often refer to that as, or at least a cousin of that, is something we refer to as meeting FOMO. And there's kind of a, if you will, that the pendulum can swing, because then on one side you've got a lack of inclusion, and that's a problem. Then, when companies become aware of inclusivity and how important it is, they can swing the pendulum in the other direction, and now everyone's got meeting FOMO, and everyone wants to be in every meeting. And we have to find better ways to scale our time. 

And then, you know, you've got these other issues that you're talking about that are related, which is if we invite the wrong people, then we're not going to have the right meeting, or we're not going to get the right work done.

Myriam: Yeah. And not the right conversations. And I wonder whether—I think this has actually reduced with the working-from-home times we're currently living in, because back in the days in an office, running from one meeting to the other was a perfect excuse not to do the work. "Oh, I'm so busy. I have so many meetings," constantly complaining, always having an excuse why pushing these kind of uncomfortable tasks away. So it was actually a nice thing, and I think it's related to cognitive dissonance. You just want to be the person who is engaged with the work, and you don't want to be the person who is actually avoiding work, so you accept all the meetings and have a fantastic excuse. And now with working from home, I think we realized what the real opportunity costs of a meeting are because we can either enjoy family time or we can do the work that we try to avoid or we can have a meeting.

Douglas: Or we can do the work in the meeting. If we truly need to collaborate, let's come together and do the work. I think so many meetings are status updates or informative, and they're not really serving a greater purpose.

Myriam: Yeah. Most meetings are actually emails.

Douglas: Mm-hmm. And if they're not, let's honor that. Let's be explicit of why an email is not going to suffice, because if there's a reason it's not an email and we don't communicate that, then no one understands, and it's not going to live up to its potential.

Myriam: Wonderful. And this is exactly, I think, where the art of facilitation comes in and where facilitation must not necessarily be restricted to an external facilitator you hire—

Douglas: That's right.

Myriam: —but it's the responsibility of every team leader or manager to facilitate to speak out these hidden reasons why we meet. Maybe we want to meet because it just feels good to be surrounded with some human beings and to share how we are feeling. And even if it's just for a boring status update that could have done by email, yes, but we enjoy wasting our time for half an hour.

Douglas: You know, the BBC did a report, and they said that most dysfunctional meetings were actually a form of therapy. And, you know, it rung really true for me. It's like, man, the people need to come together and connect. They just throw a meeting on the calendar, and they make an excuse to have it. Well, if that's the case, let's honor that purpose. Let's really unpack it and say, "The real reason that I'm bringing folks together is I want to connect with the team." Well, then, let's just say it's a team-connection meeting. Don't give some other guys or some other stuff that no one wants to talk about and everyone's going to hate anyway. Let's really say, "Let's just talk about the weather." And if it's going to build trust and connection on the team, then there's a benefit to it. But let's honor what we're trying to get out of it.

Myriam: Totally. And I think it's so true, and it's not only true for meetings. I think the moment we are just not honest about the purpose, why we're doing something, and we try to hide it, where we lack integrity, something happens to our mind that we are not as calm and focused and empathetic towards each other. So I think if we are then suddenly having a room full of people who are spending time for a reason that they actually rationally know that is not the real reason, I think, obviously, most meetings turn out to be very undelightful, to say the least.

Douglas: So, I want to come back to your idea parties. That sounds fun. How did it work?

Myriam: It was fantastic, actually. I booked a room in the coworking space where I was, and provided beer and sticky notes. So everyone came with a challenge. They had two minutes to pitch their challenge, and it could be whatever, from "I want to build a business" to "I want to stop fighting with my boyfriend." And then, we had three minutes of brainstorming with everyone who was in the room. Everyone had a block of sticky notes. And we were first brainstorming on questions, because I realized that we are so quick in giving solutions to people and feedback and it's totally unsolicited, and in two minutes we don't understand what the problem is anyway. So what we are lacking is not ideas how to solve it, but we like perspectives on how to look at our problem from a different way. So we would brainstorm for two minutes on questions. So everyone would just shout out a question that comes to their mind, write it on a sticky note, and at the end of the three minutes, the person in the spotlight or hot seat received a bunch of sticky notes to take home and to reflect on. So we did this, and everyone could just jump in the spotlight and share. And in the second round, we, then, did a kind of premortem brainstorm. So they would pitch their goal, "I want to be a millionaire tomorrow." And then we would do the same thing with, "Okay, what can you do to fail for sure?" And then they would get a bunch of Post-it Notes, how they can fail.

Douglas: I love the lateral-thinking-type stuff, like, how can we fail in liberating structures, TRIZ. Like, what are we doing today that resembles any of these counterproductive behaviors? It's really cool stuff. 

And then also the questioning. I love question storms or just getting folks to focus on thinking about the problem framer and the questioning. My favorite—Einstein has that quote. If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask. And then once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.

Myriam: Yes. And it's so true. It's so true until today that I think that's where my background in behavioral science really helps me because we are very often just standing in our own way. So it's uncomfortable to try to figure out the right question, because usually we satisfy this desire of instant gratification by just solving the easy question first. I was sitting in these board meetings in my life in the public sector, where the tiniest problems or challenges got blown up and took 80 percent of the meeting time just to avoid the actual really important topics that were kind of hairy. And I think this is just how our brains work. So the role of a facilitator is, How can we actually help the group to get out of their own way? How can we make it easier to address these hairy problems? And how can we use the way how our brains are wired in order to solve the problems? And a question storm or a premortem are just perfect ways to use our instincts in a kind of efficient way.

Douglas: Absolutely. And, you know, I think back to your statement around, it doesn't have to be external; it can be internal facilitator. And I think the thing that so many folks miss is that you don't have to have facilitator in your title. Anybody who books a meeting as a facilitator, the question is, Are you being intentional about it? Are you doing a good job as a facilitator? Are you just setting a meeting and then showing up and, at best, pointing them an agenda? 

Myriam: And are you curious about the outcome? Are you open for whatever shows up? And I think even as a parent, you can be a facilitator. Educators are facilitators. Maybe a spouse is a facilitator.

Douglas: Yeah. I mean, if you look at the definition of to make easy, I mean, I think anyone can facilitate almost anything, right? Like, how can we support and coach and guide things to their natural resting place?

Myriam: Yeah. And I have many conversations around the question whether it is actually a goal to make things easy, and then we often end up in technicalities. Okay, replace easy by simple, or—

Douglas: Yeah.

Myriam: —replace complexity. But I think that's the essence to make it less frictionous. 

Douglas: Yes, exactly. When I hear to make easy, it's not that we're going to avoid complex or complicated things. It's not that we're going to avoid discomfort. 

Myriam: Yes. 

Douglas: We're just going to make it easy to sit with that discomfort. We're going to move through it. We're going to sit with it. We're going to walk with it. But it would be a lot harder if the facilitator wasn't there, if that guide wasn't with you. And it doesn't mean we're not going to take a—we're going to avoid this strenuous hike. It just means that we're going to have a guide that's going to point out where the rattlesnakes are or help us kind of stay together as a pack.

Myriam: Yeah. And sometimes it's just good to give permission to someone to interrupt us, to be provocative, to be strict with the time to tell us to come back, to ask us the uncomfortable questions. I think it's like a yoga teacher or a gym teacher. You hate them for 59 minutes, right? You just don't want them to be there, because they push you a little further, and they make it really difficult for you. But that's why you're going there, and that's why you love them at the last minute and for the entire week before the next workout.

Douglas: That's right. I love it.

So let's shift gears a little bit to thinking about the future and sort of, like, what's on the horizon? What are you exploring right now? What risks are you taking? I'm really curious about how people are just embracing the future. I know you have Never Done Before coming up, and I just want to explore some of the future a little bit with you.

Myriam: Yeah. I think the future's really been so abstract and uncertain at the moment, where I think very few people plan longer than two weeks. So I think my future started in March this year, when the first lockdown happened, and I lost, within a week, about 50,000 Euros in expected income. That's a lot of money for a solopreneur. And I realized that I have to shift gears very quickly and to become very creative. 

At the same time, I also realized that from a mindset of desperation and anxiety, I won't be able to actually move forward, because it's like in dating. If someone is desperate, everyone can smell it, and they will never hide it. Nobody will date a desperate girl or a desperate guy. Nobody will hire a desperate entrepreneur. So you have to be in this space where you dance with this uncertainty and where you dance with fear and just embrace everything that comes, trusting that something great will come out of it. 

I think what drove me back then, and it's still what drives me now, is the observation that it's a fantastic opportunity that COVID presents us, despite all the misery, of course, and despite all the health issues and economic implications. But the shift that we really have to reconsider the way how we communicate, how we meet, and how we make use of our time together, I think this is a great opportunity.

And for me personally, it was a learning journey. Before March, I was a pen-and-paper facilitator, and suddenly I became—I didn't even know how to create a breakout room before March, to be very honest. And I was very lucky that I had very early a mentor on MURAL because I had to translate my offline mastermind into a virtual mastermind within a weekend, and it magically worked. And since then, I was still thriving. I was absorbing everything that was coming up. 

And then, luckily, I found encouragement in my network to bring the idea of the Never Done Before Facilitation Festival to the online space. So basically, the idea was, what if we rethought the way how we organize facilitation conferences? What if we do it differently? What if we provided space where we can try things we have never tried before, where we can really find design, explore the new trends in facilitation? And it started with a crazy idea. And then others called me brave. I think I was just naive enough to underestimate the effort and the risk of doing that and starting with such a bold statement. But now it's, yeah, it will happen. We have the Never Done Before Facilitation Festival fully online, 24 hours, around the globe, 30 facilitators from all continents joining. And we do everything differently. And yeah, we dance with the status quo of facilitation.

Douglas: I love it. I love the whole idea of pushing the boundaries. And you had this concept before COVID hit, and then it became even more poignant in the sense that we're doing all these things we've never done before. And it crossed my mind that I wonder how many people had ideas that they wanted to try, that they were planning to do for the Festival, and then they actually had—they were forced to do them because of COVID so they could no longer say they were never been done before.

Myriam: Yes, that's true. On the other hand, and this is funny, despite the fact that we are, on a daily basis, I think, all of us are doing stuff that we've never done before. 

Douglas: That's right. 

Myriam: Still, most of the stuff that we see online is all of the same, and been there, done that, so many times because I think the first month, or the first six weeks, and this was the beauty of the first wave, was that we had permission to try and to be imperfect and to fail because we're in this boat together. And now, suddenly, second wave, kind of everyone expects us to have figured it out. So we are less prone to take risks—

Douglas: Mm.

Myriam: —maybe less happy to experiment, and I think it's time to revive that because there's so many things we can do online that are impossible to do offline. And this is something we haven't explored enough yet. We are so much focusing on how can we translate our offline stuff into the online world, ignoring that maybe offline, it wasn't that grand anyway.

Douglas: Yeah. You know, the thing that comes to mind for me is just also how the tools can guide so much of the way we think, because it's like, oh, I'm assuming I use MURAL, I'm assuming I use Zoom, and then I sit down and look at those tools and think, well, what can I do here? versus just starting first with a concept, with the purpose, and walking around with that for a little bit and thinking, how can I create something and then force the tool? You know, I can bend the tool to my will.

Myriam: And also, there are so many new tools out there. I mean, it's a vegetable garden of mushrooms. I don't know how you say that in English. Anyway, all these tools are emerging.

Douglas: Wait. So it literally translates as a "vegetable garden of mushrooms"? 

Myriam: No. 

Douglas: No, okay. Well, that was a literal translation. I think that would be awesome, and I will start using it.

Myriam: You can start using it anyway. Never used before.

Douglas: Right. Yeah. There you go.

Myriam: Yeah. So for instance, because of Never Done Before, I'm experimenting with a lot of tools, and I found myself in these situations where I just host a workshop or meet up on a new tool. So recently I was on ____(27:43), which I love. So it's totally avatar based. It's perfect for fishbowl or world cafe, but it's very new to facilitators. So there I was, with a room full of professional, expert facilitators, without video and a tool that they didn't know. And I was amazed by the dynamics it took and how quickly, then, we actually also learned to adjust our facilitation side because we have to communicate differently. So that's what I like about your prompt because let's first sit down and think about the purpose and the desired outcome in the group and then find the tool that actually enhances that, because I think for many conversations, we actually don't need a video, and we would have much more focused conversations if we don't have to try to look good all the time.

Douglas: That is true. And, you know, the other thing is while video's great, it's also pretty exhausting when you compare it to someone being in a meeting room, because in a meeting room, you don't feel like—you could do this, right? Just kind of slump over for a second, lean over on the table, put your head down and just kind of listen for a second. But when the video's here, no one does that, you know? Like, no one does that, because they're like, oh, I'm framed up. I got to stay on—oh, law of thirds. I got to keep my eyes right here. So it's a whole different dynamic. And I think that's another reason why we have to plan so many breaks and give people opportunities to just check out of that little zone of, I don't know, insanity that we're stuck in all day.

Myriam: Yes. And I think there's one more thing that we neglect tremendously is that we are missing these transition moments that we walked into a meeting room and then our brain knew, okay, new topic, new group, new focus, peace, free headspace around now because we are in a new setting. With Zoom or with our computer, our brain literally thinks that we are still in the same room with still the same thing happening because we haven't moved. But we stop one meeting, we start the next meeting, and we expect our emotions and our minds and brains to adjust. But we don't give it space. To start meetings, online meetings, with a very clear check in, I think, is more important than ever just to create this transition moment.

Douglas: I've been saying that for a while, too. I couldn't agree more, because even an in-person meeting, everyone is just running from meeting to meeting. And even though there was that transition where you're walking is a physical shift, I don't know if it's enough time for people to mentally prepare. So I used to call it the boot-up time. Actually, we give people time to allow their brains to soak up this new topic, because we don't know what they were just—they might have just been on the phone, walking into the next meeting, you know? 

Myriam: Yeah.

Douglas: So, yeah, it's important. 

And the other thing I've noticed personally is since I don't have to drive into town anymore—I had about a 20-, 30-minute drive in the morning and in the evening, and it sort of acted as a transition moment. If you look at complexity theory—I love the cynefin model—how they have in between each domain, there's that disorder. So you kind of have to go through that transition through to switch domains. And it's sort of like Superman changing into—Clark Kent has to go into the telephone booth to become Superman. He can't just instantly switch, right? And so when I switch between husband Douglas and Voltage Control Douglas, now it's me just walking in and shutting that door, right? Before, it used to be me getting in the car, and I would listen to some music or a podcast or something. I don't have that anymore, you know? I probably should invent something new, whether it's a walk around the block or something that could replace that, because I think that ritual's important. And it's very similar to what you were talking about, these transition moments.

Myriam: And I love the example, actually, where Superman, Clark, and the telephone booth. And I think you're fortunate that you do have the door you can walk through to separate your professional from your private life—

Douglas: Yes.

Myriam: —because I work for some who would use the kitchen table for breakfast in the morning—

Douglas: That's right.

Myriam: —then it becomes the office, then it becomes the playground, and then it becomes the dinner table. But I read this book, Alter Ego, where he explains that very often we have these items we use, and they trigger something in our personality. So, for instance, Martin Luther King, he actually didn't need glasses, but once he put on his glasses, he had the confidence to speak like he spoke. And for instance, I realized for myself that at one point I could better focus on the person I was talking to in a video conference when I had my microphone in my hand, because this put me into my, okay, I'm a podcaster now, so I'm totally focused on my conversation partner. So what if you could have another pair of glasses so that, okay, when you switch from Voltage Control Douglas to Daddy Douglas, you can just change your pair of glasses or you can put the head on of.

Douglas: That's right. Yeah, for sure. That's amazing. I love it.

Well, unfortunately, we have come to the conclusion of our conversation, and it's been so much fun, Myriam. I think we could go on for hours, of course, but here we are. 

And I want to just give you a moment to share a message, a parting message, to our listeners. So what would you like to leave them with?

Myriam: We can change the world one workshop at a time. I truly believe that. And I believe that we don't have to call ourselves "professional facilitators" to do that. But I think if we bring the facilitator's mindset to the table to make conversations easy, to highlight different perspectives and co-create solutions, I think that the world would really be a better place.

Douglas: Awesome. Well, hopefully, listeners and everyone in our networks will take that to heart because I agree. I think if we can be more intentional, we can change the world. 

So thank you so much for being with me today, Myriam, and hope to talk to you soon and see you at Never Done Before.

Myriam: Thank you, Douglas. Looking forward to seeing you there. Thanks for the conversation. Loved it.

Outro: Thanks for joining me for another episode of Control the Room. Don't forget to subscribe to receive updates when new episodes are released. If you want more, head over to our blog, where I post weekly articles and resources about working better together, voltagecontrol.com.

"We're doing all of our education right now remotely, using Zoom and thinking through, okay, how does learning happen there? What's kind of uniquely possible—I like those words—with that medium? And how can we capture those moments? It's not a replacement. It's like, oh, it's going to be just like things that happen face to face. Like, no, it's different, but also good. And how do we get to that different-but-also-good place?"

Dr. Dawan Stanford

In this episode of the Control the Room podcast, I'm pleased to be speaking with Dr. Dawan Stanford of Fluid Hive, a design-driven innovation company. As president of Fluide Hive, Dawan helps organizations to see, solve, and act on challenges that are complex, dynamic, and interconnected.

Dawan and I talk about pushing energy into a room, checking in with people, and his experience with remote learning as the Design Studio Director of Georgetown University's Learning & Design program. Listen in to find out how Times New Roman ended his legal career.

Show Highlights

[1:30] How Times New Roman ended Dawan's legal career

[10:33] What's in it for the Participant

[18:39] Cut the Tools Some Slack

[24:56] Writing a Detailed Agenda, then Adjusting it

[28:36] Pushing Energy into the Room

[33:29] Checking in with People

Links | Resources

Dawan on LinkedIn

Fluide Hive

About the Guest

Dr. Dawan Stanford, President of design-driven innovation company Fluid Hive, helps organizations to see, solve, and act on challenges that are complex, dynamic, and interconnected. He has experience in Silicon Valley and international business that he combines with design, design thinking, and academic research in his work at Fluide Hive.

Dr. Stanford is also the Design Studio Director and a Professor of Learning & Design at Georgetown University. His studio serves as a space where students integrate their core coursework in the program, develop as learning practitioners, and develop their leadership, collaboration, and facilitation skills.

Voltage Control is a facilitation agency that helps teams work better together with custom-designed meetings and workshops, both in-person and virtual. Our master facilitators offer trusted guidance and custom coaching to companies who want to transform ineffective meetings, reignite stalled projects, and cut through assumptions. Based in Austin, Voltage Control designs and leads public and private workshops that range from small meetings to large conference-style gatherings. 

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Voltage Control on the Web

Contact Voltage Control

Intro: Welcome to the Control the Room Podcast, a series devoted to the exploration of meeting culture and uncovering cures for the common meeting. Some meetings have tight control, and others are loose. To control the room means achieving outcomes while striking a balance between imposing and removing structure, asserting and distributing power, leaning in and leaning out, all in the service of having a truly magical meeting.

Douglas: Today I'm with Dawan Stanford, president of Fluid Hives. Welcome to the show, Dawan.

Dawan: Hello. Thank you for having me.

Douglas: Of course, so excited to talk facilitation with you. And for starters, one of the things I love hearing from guests on the show is how they got their start, because there's not really any college out there that you can go take a facilitation degree. And so most people find themselves in this work through many different channels, and there's always an interesting story, and so I'd love to hear how you found your way into this amazing work.

Dawan: Well, I'm a designer, and my path into design started many, many years ago with some professional training and photography, and that led to looking at layout and then studying color and then studying graphic design. And as I progressed in that career, I had a legal career for a while, and I realized that I stayed late to design the closing binders for the client because the normal design was Times New Roman, centered, and you put some things in bold and underlined them. Like, oh, no. We can do something better than that. And after spending a couple hours designing closing-binder covers, I got a look from one of the partners: Maybe you're not one of us. Like, maybe I'm not. So I found out like, no, I'm not one of you. 

And as I started doing more and more work, I was looking at more and more moments where it was design together, creating together, bringing groups of people together to understand how they need to work, how they are working, how they understand the context where they're working. And so I began to take a very close look at my role in those moments, those conversations, and how to be very intentional about constructing them, because it's a precious thing when you have a handful of people in a room, or more, focusing their attention on one endeavor. And to be offered that gift is something that I want to take seriously and treat carefully.

Douglas: Yeah, it's interesting. I love this notion that it wasn't that long ago when we started to have a plural form of priority. 

Dawan: Mm-hmm.

Douglas: I think focus is the same way, right? And so this notion that, hey, we can have more than one focus or more than one priority is very modern thinking. And I think it's a disservice to us, and facilitation techniques can help us get back to that, like, and get everyone kind of aligned in thinking in the same way so that we can actually make some real progress.

Dawan: Yeah. Making those choices ahead of time and those tradeoffs. I often look at the situations where I'm leading a group through something and kind of start to think about all the different people involved, because often the person who's sponsoring, has asked me to come in and help, isn't necessarily going to participate. Sometimes they do. So you have the sponsor, you have participants. Then, there's often someone that the sponsor is reporting to, which may be one or more organizations or maybe someone in their chain, and starting to think about how all of these people have expectations and needs. And there may be people downstream from the event or facilitated moment that need to do something with what was created. So how to think about what gets built and passed on and how that is captured and packaged is also a piece of it.

Douglas: You know, I love this. That's your design background coming into the center, right? It's like, how do we make sure to design in a way that considers and accommodates all these various people, because they're all going to come from different perspectives, different roles, different needs, and how do we design for them?

Dawan: And so often, people will be asking for an event or a workshop or a moment, and I'll hear a lot about the thing, and "We want people to do this. And we have this much time, and this, this." "Well, what problem are you trying to solve? Let's talk about sort of the thing that individually or organizationally you are hoping to accomplish. How will the world be different, how will your world be different when we're done?" Then we can start talking about like, "All right, well, what kind of thing actually solves that problem? And maybe it's a four-hour thing instead of a two-hour thing. Maybe it's a two-hour thing instead of a four-hour thing. Maybe it's something that we need to come back to over a series of weeks." 

But one of the first conversations I often have is, number one, listening to how people are framing up the problem they think they're trying to solve, because people don't like to hear that they're wrong about that. And so it's how you listen. And I say, "Okay. How do you know?" Because what I want to know is, okay, here's the problem you think you're trying to solve. What evidence do you have about that? And sometimes they're, "Oh, well, this is what's happened in the past. Here's what's led to this. Here's how we decided that this would contribute to this trajectory." Okay, I can kind of take that as a given. But often I hear like, "Oh, well, we had some space in the schedule, and we were hoping to…" Then I want to dig for a meaningful problem for both them and the participants, for the sponsor and the participants, so that I don't come and do something, and then afterwards people are, "Hey, wait a minute. That wasn't a great experience for us. You didn't do a very good job." Like, "Oh, because I helped you solve a problem you didn't really have." So that's a key first step in the conversation for me.

Douglas: Absolutely. You mentioned, how do you know? Another question that I think is similar to that is, how will we know? And it's the, how will we know if we were successful, and did we actually get the outcome we were seeking? And if we're not clear on the outcome, we can't even articulate that ahead of time. So, you know, how do we design in some of these assessment points so that we can tell if we did a good job or not?

Dawan: Sort of following on pretty much on the heels of the, "what problem are we trying to solve?" conversation, beginning to map out high-level options on an experience and suggesting, "Okay, here's where we might end up with this path," and suggesting a couple of different paths so that the sponsor can start to have the conversation about like, "Okay, does this look like a win for you? We're heading toward, we can achieve this, this, and this in this amount of time and with this level of resourcing. Is that going to be worth it? Is that going to be a worthwhile use of both time and money and energy?" And having those conversations explicitly on the front end makes things so much easier, because once you have clear objectives, once you have a clear idea of the problem that you're trying to solve with the experience, then you can say, okay, I can get into design mode with what's happening from minute to minute without having to sort of guess and hope, and, like, show up on a day physically or virtually, and say, "I hope this works out," as opposed to, like, "I'm fairly confident that this is going to work," barring the usual emergencies that we encounter during facilitation.

Douglas: Yeah. The thing that was kind of coming to mind for me as I was listening is this kind of scenario that you're creating, where you're allowing them to peer into the future, but let's consider that this is the outcome that we're at, and they can kind of sit with it, because you're right. So many people get so fixated on the thing that they need to go do, especially if something becomes really hip and really, I don't know, there's really trendy. Like, for a while it seemed like everybody was doing hackathons. I think some people still do them. But when do you think to yourself, "I need to have a hackathon," and your thoughts are so focused on the what that you're not actually peering into, well, what's that going to generate for us? What's that going to...? What kind of new opportunity or a new position does that put us in? And I like the framing that you were sharing around, because we talk a lot about purpose and outcomes, but the way you were describing it was really about setting up this kind of vision into this future scenario, where it's like, oh, this is the way the world will be if we do this. And how does that make you feel, or what does that create for you?

Dawan: Yeah. And it's helping the sponsor articulate what is uniquely possible with this group of people in this moment, and how can we start to approach making that happen? because it's, you're just like, oh, insert hackathon here. Well, no. What is the thing that we need and this group of people needs from this moment?

Douglas: Also, earlier, you were talking about what I translated to be buyer versus user, at least that's the language we would use in the startup world, the software world. In the facilitation world, I guess we would say sponsor or stakeholder and participant. And coming back to that design background you have, I think it's really fascinating to think about, if we're not considering both in our outcomes and how we structure the flow of the day or the flow of the event, then we could potentially design something that's at a disservice or is not properly tuned for one versus the other. And often I think the sponsor is the one, or the buyer, is the one that gets a lot of the attention.

Dawan: Yeah. The sponsor gets a lot of the attention because they're kind of in the room when you're designing. But the participants have to have not only have a good experience, but you have to understand what's in it for them so that they're going to bring the energy. They're going to be open to the flow of experience. They're going to be open to doing hard work at an intense pace, because the pacing of the events that I build is really, really tight. It's flexible, but tight. And we can we can talk about the mechanics of that, but it's mapping out who all of the people are. And you could say stakeholder or user or customer, but all the people. And that includes sponsor, participant, any people upstream who will be using what you produce. Sometimes it's also the people who are served by the people in the room who will be, perhaps, the ultimate beneficiary of some of the ideas that are put together in the room. And it's, "Okay with all of these people," and then you can start to map out, "Okay, here's what this person needs out of the situation. The participants kind of need these things." And you can also start to think about all the different relationships to the work, because sometimes part of the responsibility of the facilitator is to deepen relationships between participants or to help amplify ways people have connected in the past to do a particular bit of work.

Douglas: I love this notion of thinking about relationships or the interconnectedness of the group, or the lack thereof, and how that impacts the work to be done or how the work that is done is impacted, impacting the future states of those relationships. I think that way of thinking, almost, like, you know, it's a micro social network, and you're applying some almost network theory to it a bit and thinking about how you mend relationships or how you lean on existing ones. I think that's a really powerful design tool or lens to apply, and I like that way of thinking about it. I hadn't really thought about it from that perspective before.

Dawan: I owe many debts of gratitude to different designers and design researchers, in particular, Indi Young, and she really talks about the difference between the problem space and the solution space, and people like to race into the solution space without doing the hard work to understand the people and how people are making decisions and why people are behaving the way they behave. And if part of the work is getting into behavior change, to even more wanting to understand the people before you start setting up what happens in the room or what happens online, and especially her work around listening and how to listen well. I've taken that both into the sponsor conversations but also into the room, when I'm thinking about how to bring the deep listening that helps everyone really be fully present in the space.

Douglas: It's amazing how much presence and deep listening could just have vast impacts across all meetings. And I often love to ask folks, if you could change one thing about any meeting, where would it be? And I think that might be—it's hard for me to choose because we think about and work in this space so much, it's like, oh, man, there's so many issues. But I tell you, that's so prevalent, this attendees just spending majority of the meeting thinking about what they're going to say next, and a lot of it's just because they don't want to sound dumb or they want to say something impressive in front of leadership. But I think there's a real missed opportunity to not worry about those things and to create safety for people just to speak however they speak and let the ideas flow. 

And so I guess I'm curious. That brings me to that thinking around these moments in meetings that could be so much better. What kind of things start to surface for you as you think about things that could be and people could just do in their everyday meetings?

Dawan: Oh, my gosh. Here comes the avalanche. Well, it's starting off before the meeting, what problem are you trying to solve? What is it that can only be done by bringing this group of people together and being clear about that before people get in the room or on Zoom or wherever? And then it's being conscious, like giving people space to think. And one of the things that I do in most of the events that I create and sometimes in meetings is give people a moment to write down what they're thinking. And it's just a few minutes, sometimes 10 minutes, depending on the length and depth of what we're working on. But then you give everyone a chance to get their thoughts down. That says a couple of things. You have people who are reluctant to speak, and that's because of power in the room, because of personality, because of relationships, because of trust, because of a whole bunch of things. So you have reluctance to speak. Then you have people who are—just need a moment to get a handle on sort of, "All right, what do I think about this? What do I really think?" 

And the other thing that you get when you do that writing, especially in longer events, is you're able to capture some of those individual thoughts to process later after the event. So you're setting up what happens after, depending on how you structure what's captured. So that's one thing. Make sure there's enough space for people to think. 

And then there's time and being disciplined about time, saying, okay, we have this list of things, and this isn't necessarily an agenda, but it's saying what's most important for us to get accomplished and then allocating your time across those most important things. That way you can say, "All right, we're confident that we're going to get these most important things done. And these couple other things, maybe we can take care of those offline or in a different way." Those are a couple of things. 

The other thing, and this is perhaps harder—can be harder—in meetings, depending on who you are. But it's just looking at the energy of the people who are in the room and helping people come into this space well. And sometimes that's taking moments so everyone can check in with each other. And those couple of minutes to reset and be human can help people attend to the business at hand faster and better. And I've noticed that when I've given people those, a little bit of a buffer and a chance to be human, it just made what follows really, really nice. And that's one of the advantages if you're meeting remotely and every everyone's remote, you can put people into one-on-one conversations for a couple minutes, because often you have the meeting dynamics of, oh, my people come in and they sit by who they sit by, and they say hello to say hello. But, you know, people get patterns. They have people they're closer to and people they know better. And you have the opportunity to force some of that mixing and build some of that team cohesiveness through those conversations, just with a couple of flicks of a switch in your favorite meeting software.

Douglas: Yeah, it's interesting. Brings up two things we spoke about in the preshow chat. And the first is anytime we're thinking about design, space becomes a very critical element, whether we're talking about negative space or what have you. And I think in the virtual world, the tools we use can impact the space that we provide for our attendees and for people who are experiencing the design that we've laid out for the meeting and the session. And one of the things you mentioned was there's just too much blame being pointed at the tools themselves.

Dawan: Yeah. Taking your in-person meeting practices and not changing anything and just dumping them into—I think everyone's in front of a laptop. Everyone's in front of a camera—probably not going to work so well. And there's a decent chance that the meetings weren't so great to begin with, and now you're expecting that to work better in a different context, where you have different kinds of feedback, different kinds of interactions. 

I've been watching the sort of emergency online-education conversations play out. There're lots of people saying, "See? This whole online-education thing doesn't work." Like, well, when people have three days to take an entire university online, I don't know, who might want to cut them some slack on that because what can you do? But people are starting to see other deeper examples of designed online education where you have the instructional design team working with faculty. And these are conversations we're having a lot where I teach at Georgetown in the master's in Learning, Design, and Technology. And we're doing all of our education right now remotely, using Zoom and thinking through, okay, how does learning happen there? What's kind of uniquely possible—I like those words—with that medium? And how can we capture those moments? It's not a replacement. It's like, oh, it's going to be just like things that happen face to face. Like, no, it's different, but also good. And how do we get to that different-but-also-good place?

Douglas: That's amazing. You know, so much of the work we do is about kind of accelerating innovation, and so people can get it in their heads that it's about moving quickly. And just because we're accelerating action doesn't mean that it means that everything we have to do must be fast. And in fact, a lot of it is about taking the time it requires to design things carefully. But what we don't want is analysis paralysis, where we're just kind of spinning our wheels and just thinking about things. As long as we're making progress and doing things, then allowing the design process to take the time it requires, that's goodness. That's good stuff. It results in better outcomes.

Dawan: And I like that, allowing the process to take the time it needs. Because I— in one way or another, I often said, like, listen, you're going to kind of pay the price of this now, or you're going to pay later. 

Douglas: That old analogy or that old saying of, if you think an expert's expensive, try working with a novice. 

Dawan: Yeah. If you don't take the time— I remember a conversation. It was like, "Well, we really don't have time to really do this work you're talking about around the problem we're trying to solve, the problem space. We really need to just get in there and do this and that." And I say, "Okay, well, I understand what you're saying. How much time and resources do you have to do all of this over again?" And they say, "What?" It's like, "No, no, no. I just want to make sure that if we're taking this approach, that you can reinvest all of this to do all of this work again in case we get the problem wrong, because then we can just sort of jump in and guess because you have this huge stack of resources to burn." And usually they're like, "Oh, no, no, no, we don't have extra money. We don't have extra time. So, yeah. Maybe we should spend a little time increasing the chances that we're solving problems that are worth solving."

Douglas: Yeah. It's always a Tilt sign for me when someone comes in and they've got it all figured out and they just want a price. It's like, hey, I'm not selling cars here. I can't just say, this is what it's going to be. And, you know, it's always, how much is it? And I think that mentality of innovation in a bottle on the shelf is something that would give the allure that that's what's happening, but it takes a lot of care and a lot of time to design and extract out where the there is.

Dawan: Well, I've learned to be very clear around the expectations of what's possible within the boundaries of the work, because there is this—I think we're past the moment a little bit. But there was this moment maybe five years ago when it was the design as magic. It was like, oh, it's magic. It's the Silicon Valley juice, and drink it. You will sprout innovation. You will sprout market cap. Like, it's amazing. Like, oh my gosh, an IPO just fell out of my body. No. It doesn't work that way, and there are some people who also, like, heard that, went out and bought some, it didn't work. Like, oh, this doesn't work. And it's like, "Oh, yeah." And it's like, you probably said, "I will pay x," and someone said, "I will take x," and then you were surprised you didn't get the results, as opposed to someone who says, "Well, what problem are you trying to solve? What are you hoping to accomplish? What are you looking to invest over time in doing this work well and building the skills of your team to do this well?" because ideally, after working with me for a while, people no longer need me. I hate to want to do that to myself, but if I'm doing my work well, eventually it seems like, "No, we've got this. We can build on our own," or "It's been built into the organization." Sometimes people will just want me to come in and do. But those are the things that I get happy about. Like, "Oh, you want me to build something that will last longer than I'm there? I like that."

Douglas: Yeah. There's legacy. We're making a difference in the world.

Dawan: Yeah. And it's also seeing what good design can do once it takes root in a culture. It's not, once again, going to be somehow magical, but I would say it will be better. And better varies from place to place. But I like to see that, or even just to see people taking away little things. 

One of the things that I do with all of my engagements is I create a very detailed facilitation guide, and I have it all the way down to one-minute increments for different things. And I showed one of the—someone I work with one of these. They're like, "Are you crazy? People will be late for this, and this will run long, and that will..." I know. But now that I've thought through it at this level, I know that when something goes wrong here, I know where to adjust and how to adjust. And so once you have that problem to resolve in the outcomes, then you can say, "Well, these people are trying to get to know each other, so a five-minute break here isn't really going to work. They kind of need 10 minutes. And how can we make sure the mingling happens? How can we make sure that people are in the relationship-building phase as opposed to a relationship deepening? So how do we build that into the breaks, or if there's a lunch or whatever the moments are? And that requires getting really granular on paper so that during the event you can roll with the opportunities, whether it's a tech fail or sort of one moment that is better than you expected. I don't want to interrupt this, because the thing that we wanted to happen at 4:00 p.m. is now happening at 11:00. So I'm not going to get in the way of it. I'll just have to redesign." And it gives you something to tweak, something to adapt.

Douglas: And I love this mantra from, I think it comes from complexity-in-form thinking, and definitely heard it in the Liberating Structures community. But what happens was meant to happen. And it's very much akin to what I heard you say earlier around embracing the uniquely possible. 

Dawan: Mm-hmm.

Douglas: So going back to this concept of participant energy and taking into consideration all the fatigue we're all experiencing, and also someone could have had a crises, even though we've done some upfront research and exploration into where the team's at and the dynamics, when we walk into the room, things could be quite different. So I'm curious to hear what you've done in scenarios like that or what you do to prepare for things and be ready for the unexpected.

Dawan: Well, I leave a cushion in every event of a certain amount of time, knowing that sometimes different things will run over. I design every break. So if I have a five-minute break in the schedule, and I tell everyone, "Hey, it's time for five-minute break," I have 10 minutes built into the schedule because five-minute breaks always take ten minutes. And those are some of the mechanics on the how I'm connecting with people. I'm assuming, and especially sort of now as we're recording in the summer of COVID, that people are coming into the event fragile and burned out. And so one of the things that I try to stop and do is give people a chance to check in and talk. I'm assuming they're, like, "Hey, your social interactions are kind of not happening the way they used to. Your coping mechanisms have all been broken and reshuffled." So it's helping people have just very human conversations and easing into the work, and I also find taking more breaks, not expecting people to sustain the intensity as long. 

When I'm in the room with people, it's very easy to read the energy. And I find a lot of the work is me sort of pushing energy into the room. And you can do that to an extent. You're like, "Well, what do you mean, pushing energy? Is this some sort of mystical, reiki thing? What are you doing?" Well, it's making that eye contact, giving people the big smile, and getting the big smile back, and doing that with lots of people moving around in the space, giving people a different place to focus in. And when I'm doing that virtually, it's a lot of time sort of scanning the faces on the screens, but recognizing when like, "Oh, you know, we need to do sort of an impromptu small-group thing," and mixing up the types of interaction, the types of things people are seeing on the screen, so it's not just, oh, you're seeing other faces. Sometimes there's going to be oh I don't know, images, diagrams, but also using if you have any kind of whiteboarding or drawing overlay in the software that you're using, I take it home to mark things up. One of the things I do in small groups, we'll actually get giant sheets of paper and draw with each other, and that pulls people in. And you can do the same thing virtually. 

You know, those are a couple ways I think about just the energy in the room and keeping it going. And also, you have to recognize that there may come a point where people are just done, and it may come before you want it to, but there's nothing you can do about that. The thing I do structurally is I try to put sort of the high-intensity generative things earlier in the schedule and the playing with, making sense with, tweaking of things that are sort of already out there later in the day so that it's kind of organizing and making sense of and playing with so that you're not being called upon to do the mentally intense things or the things that are going to rely on a lot of your interpersonal skills around negotiation and figuring things out late in the day. That tends to be, oh, if people are going to run out of steam, you start to see it in the outputs late in the day. So I try to push some of that earlier in the day so that by the time we are getting toward the end of things, it's like, okay, these are lighter-lift activities and exchanges.

Douglas: Even during break times, I like to remind people to turn off their video and step away to remind them not to go, just jump in the email or whatever, because it'll only contribute to the fatigue later. 

Dawan: I've had a sort of working-from-home career, so the adjustment wasn't quite as brutal for me. I've done my share of time in the office, but I was just used to sort of having my studio in the house and doing everything that I needed to do with the short commute and managing the time and interaction and getting my people time in and having the energy flow. And when you're having to learn those things and adjust those things, especially if it doesn't suit your personality, that's when it can be difficult. And in meetings, it's recognizing that you might have some people who are very comfortable with the screen and the environment and how the technology flows, and other people may be just straining against it because they're desperate to be within touching distance of another human being and get that high-fidelity interaction with micro expressions and scents and all sorts of things. 

Douglas: Yeah. The dynamic's completely shifted. And in the in-person realm, you could have folks that are quiet and don't ask a lot of questions. Those same folks might ask a lot of questions when they're virtual because just that layer of glass and many, many miles of air is separation enough to where they feel more comfortable speaking up. And other folks, you know, like you say, are debilitated because they don't have all the signals they're used to having. I think it's a great reminder that facilitators, we just have to listen, and we have to bring in as much data as we can from the signals we have. And you mentioned reading the room. I'm curious which signals that you use to read that digital room, because that can be problematic.

Dawan: Well, in some ways, they're the same signals. I'm looking for, for example, give a set of instructions. I'm looking for the brows that are suddenly furrowed. And usually when people are sort of squinching their eyebrows together, that's their way of saying, "Those instructions were unclear to me." But people are reluctant to say that. They'll sort of dive into it, thinking that they're the only one who didn't understand. And probably not. It's probably that your instructions were unclear, and you need to try that again. 

And another thing is just actually checking in with people. The underutilized chat function, for example, in Zoom, there's so much that you can do with that, because when you're in a sort of face-to-face environment, you have kind of one channel in terms of, there's like, yeah, there's sort of visual cues and all that. But let's just say that there's, like, okay, you're going to say something or make a gesture in some way. But if we're actually going to talk, it's going to be voices. Whereas in Zoom you have the voice, you have the chat feed. Sometimes there's another backchannel if everyone is, say, in Slack. And so you have all of these multiple channels. And that's a different kind of conversation because now you can have people dropping in web links as someone is presenting, asking questions that can be picked up later, and so you have these multiple threads going on. And if you're looking for, oh, we want this to be just like our in-person meetings, that's really distracting. Like, well, that's a huge opportunity for people to just drop in questions as they think of them. And you come back and weave them in. You have if one person is presenting, you have someone else on the team keep an eye on the chat. So there are, I think, huge opportunities presented by that in the different channels. So the reading the room becomes kind of an interactive, participatory process. Instead of one person reading in the face-to-face contacts, you have sort of multiple people nurturing the conversation via those multiple channels.

Douglas: Yeah. And those things become elements you can design for, because I think in real life, we've spent years and years so it's in a lot of ways just second nature, so we don't consider it much like when we just walk into a room, because we can rely on our innate skills at relating. And sure, as facilitators we sharpen them, but we kind of have matured to a point, I feel, that it's not always a consideration, but in the digital space, you know, thinking of how many co-facilitators do I want? Do I want someone on Slack or Zoom chats, watching that stuff? So to me, it's really become a design consideration before we even enter into the meeting itself.

Dawan: And we're still figuring out the opportunities. I like to say, okay, well, before I sort of add other tools, add other functionality, what are the ways we can sort of tweak what we have, twist what we have so that everyone's like, "Oh yeah, there's these simple tools"? Sometimes it's as simple as "Okay, get a piece of paper and a pen, and everyone turn off your cameras and sketch out how you think this holds together for a few minutes. And then we'll have the conversation," so that you're even having someone, they're not stepping away from the meeting, but they're stepping away from, "I just have my keyboard." You're like, "Oh, I get to draw for a minute." And it's using those simple opportunities to make the exchange extremely rich the same way it would be if everyone was in the room. 

And there have been a couple of instances where I was happy that everyone was online, because I knew that their interactions, we wouldn't have been able to have if everyone was face to face. So like, for example, having 20 people have one-on-one conversations and doing several rounds of those, after you've done that and everyone's had a chance to chat for a few minutes with three different people in the room, now you're set up differently as a group for what happens later, as opposed to if you were sort of face to face in a room doing that and having 10 conversations all going on in a conference room, it's just like, oh, you can't really, like, having trouble hearing, and there's overhearing, and you can't just focus on one person. There's all this distraction. So people are able to connect that way really fast, really deep, which is nice. 

So it's finding those things that are the opportunities presented by the challenge of leading and collaborating as we sort of adapt to our world as it changes.

Douglas: Yeah. To use your words, we're embracing what's uniquely possible with these new tools.

Dawan: Yeah.

Douglas: Excellent.

Well, I think that might be a great spot to stop here on today's show. But before we go, I think listeners will be really curious how to find you, how to connect with you. You're doing some great work, and I know some people are going to want to know how to reach out.

Dawan: Oh, thanks. While I'm easy to find at fluidhive.com. If you search my last name, you will get a university. But Dawan Stanford, there aren't many of them, so that's another easy way to find me. LinkedIn and Twitter are good places to look. You can also learn more about the learning-design work that I'm involved with at Georgetown in the master's in Learning, Design, and Technology at Georgetown University. And you can also check me out on the Design Thinking 101 podcast, where I am hosting that show.

Douglas: Excellent. Yeah, definitely check it out. And Dawan, it's been a pleasure chatting with you today. I hope we stay in touch and continue the journey together.

Dawan: Oh, well, thanks for having me. It's been a ball.

Outro: Thanks for joining me for another episode of Control the Room. Don't forget to subscribe to receive updates when new episodes are released. If you want more, head over to our blog, where I post weekly articles and resources about working better together, voltagecontrol.com.

"You already have this constellation internally that is very capable, and you and me and everyone we know. But some of it is burdened. And so it has intense emotional charge that hasn't been released, or it has belief systems that are old and archaic and need to be discarded. But then once they're unburdened, the energy and the natural expression of that aspect of you is just available."

Sunni Brown

In this week's episode of the Control the Room podcast, I'm delighted to speak with Sunni Brown, founder of Deep Self Design and Sunni Brown Ink. Sunni has been named one of the 100 most creative people in business and one of the 10 most creative people on Twitter by Fast Company. She is a best selling author, speaker, and expert meeting facilitator.

We talk about the fallacy of using buzzwords in value statements, Cobra Kai, and the tango of co-facilitation. Listen in to find out what The Karate Kid remake can teach us about the complexity of people.

Show Highlights

[8:23] The proven power of taking notes by hand

[15:45] What is authenticity?

[21:27] The fallacy of buzzwords in value statements

[27:38] Cobra Kai, the more naive Karate Kid

[36:47] The tango of co-facilitation

[45:28] Dusting off your inner mirror

Links | Resources

Sunni on LinkedIn

Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers, and Changemakers

The Doodle Revolution

SB Ink

Sunni's TedTalk, Doodlers Unite!

About the Guest

Sunni Brown, founder of Deep Self Design and Sunni Brown Ink, is a best-selling author, speaker, and expert meeting facilitator. Fast Company has included her in "100 Most Creative People in Business" and "10 Most Creative People on Twitter."

Sunni, author of Gamestorming and The Doodle Revolution, leads a worldwide campaign advocating for visual, game, design, and improvisational thinking. She lists empathy, emotional intelligence, collaboration, and effective communication as some of her most sought-after leadership skills.

Voltage Control is a facilitation agency that helps teams work better together with custom-designed meetings and workshops, both in-person and virtual. Our master facilitators offer trusted guidance and custom coaching to companies who want to transform ineffective meetings, reignite stalled projects, and cut through assumptions. Based in Austin, Voltage Control designs and leads public and private workshops that range from small meetings to large conference-style gatherings. 

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Voltage Control on the Web

Contact Voltage Control

Intro: Welcome to the Control the Room Podcast, a series devoted to the exploration of meeting culture and uncovering cures for the common meeting. Some meetings have tight control, and others are loose. To control the room means achieving outcomes while striking a balance between imposing and removing structure, asserting and distributing power, leaning in and leaning out, all in the service of having a truly magical meeting. This episode is brought to you by MURAL, a digital workspace for visual collaboration. At Voltage Control, we use MURAL to facilitate engaging and productive meetings and workshops from anywhere. MURAL gives teams the means, methods and freedoms to collaborate visually. Use their suite of facilitation superpowers to control the virtual room and solve tough problems as a team with their pre-built templates and guided methods. To see for yourself why companies like IBM, Atlassian, and E* Trade rely on MURAL, start your 30 day trial at mural.co. That's mural.co

Douglas: Today I'm with Sunni Brown, founder of Sunni Brown Ink and the Center of Deep Self Design, where she helps people design their best selves. 

Welcome to the show, Sunni.

Sunni: Can I call you D?

Douglas: As long as you don't call me Doug—

Sunni: Dougie Fresh.

Douglas: —I think I'll be okay with it.

Sunni: Okay. I might slip up and call you D.

Douglas: D's perfectly fine.

So, how did you get started? How did Sunni Brown become Sunni Brown Ink?

Sunni: Well, there were many roads that led to that incarnation, but first was that I could not keep a job. So I was fired many times. So there's, like, the shadow side of it, and then there's the accidental, you know, serendipitous aspects of it, and then there's the origin story, like the conditioning-from-family stuff. So there's all wrapped up in that, you know? But first and foremost, I could not—I got fired a lot. And when I say a lot, I mean definitely over 13 times. And so I was good at getting jobs, but I wasn't good at keeping jobs, which is a hallmark of entrepreneurism, but I didn't realize that at the time. I just thought that everyone was an idiot, and somehow I didn't belong in a cage or whatever. I was very unruly as an employee. It was actually legitimately hard for me to keep a job. Even though I was good, I was insubordinate. And so eventually I just recognized that, oh, I need to be my own boss. I didn't know the boss of what. 

But serendipitously and sort of circuitously, I ended up in the Bay Area, which is rife with ideas and opportunity and innovation and potential, and that was a great place for somebody like me. And so I ended up working at The Grove, which is a visual-thinking company, and that was my introduction to visual literacy and visual thinking. I only worked there two years, and then I left and I started my own company, which again, I think—I mean, I think unless you have entrepreneurism in your family, it's almost always accidental. And it's not— it's accidental and on purpose, but it's not necessarily something—it's, like, something that finds you and you find it, you know? There was a lot of ingredients that made that thing come to life.

Douglas: So, tell us about the experience at The Grove. How did that shape what you're doing now?

Sunni: It was a great experience in the sense that I was from—like, I had just graduated with a master's in public policy, which always surprises people. But I was kind of working in the public sector, and I didn't even identify as a creative at that time. I didn't like the term creative. I didn't like the term artistic. I was very pragmatic and practical. And so I was not looking for anything of the sort, in terms of ending up at The Grove, and so I was very skeptical. 

So when I was first there, I was just hired as the executive assistant because I had been other people's assistants, but I didn't always mention I'd been fired a lot. So I was very questionable about my job-acquisition ethics. But I did always end up getting jobs. And so eventually I was working for the president, which was David Sibbet, who's, like, the grandfather of visual thinking in the United States. And I was very lucky because I was mentored by him and then eventually mentored by Dave Gray and other kind of like—he wouldn't want me to call him a grandfather, but another godfather, if you will, of visual thinking.

Douglas: Sort of a luminary. 

Sunni: Yeah, absolutely. So those were events happenstantial. But when I first was at The Grove, I was really skeptical about visual thinking, and I thought it was kind of silly, to be honest.

Douglas: So what was the thing that really changed for you? You said you used to think "it was kind of silly." What really connected the dots for you to realize, like, "Wow, this is something deeper"?

Sunni: Well, so, it was like application. I was first a graphic recorder. I don't know if you know that about me, but I started as a graphic recorder. So a person would go and do live large-scale visualizations of auditory content. And what I observed in the process of learning how to be that, which did come naturally to me—it was a skill that kind of mapped itself onto my own skills readily, which was surprising—but through that process, I recognized that there was a lot of benefits of visual thinking that were happening to me cognitively. So I was remembering content really well. I was organizing it in my mind and on paper really skillfully. I was comprehending it and sort of like getting insights. And when you're a graphic recorder, you go and you listen to every topic imaginable. So I noticed that my relationship with the content was really rich and really substantive. And I had to attribute it to what I was doing visually because it wasn't like I was special, you know? It was like, "Oh, my god, there's something meaningful to the brain about this way of thinking." And that's when I became a convert. You know, I was converted.

Douglas: That's incredible. It makes me think about something that I've been talking with a lot of folks about lately, this notion of multithreaded meetings, where when we're in MURAL and everyone is Livescribing and at the same time—now, it's certainly not at the level of proficiency and craftsmanship that, you know, you were taken to the job as a graphic recorder—but if we're all visually working in the meeting through MURAL or Mirro or any of these other tools and live capturing what we're hearing, we are unsynthesizing on the fly, we're adding nuance to what we hear because it's our own, like, filter. Even if we are attempting to be purist as possible, something's going to happen there. And when you look across the room of what everyone wrote down, you get this really rich picture of what was said, because it's, like, not only what was said, but this diversity of thought layered on top of it.

Sunni: That's cool. That's cool that you're doing that. And absolutely. It makes complete sense, right? It's like this beautiful display of insight that is unique to each person. But it's not a thin relationship. It's a really thick relationship between you and what you're trying to understand. And that's why it's so valuable. And so, then, of course, I became an evangelist about that, and that was in a different chapter of my journey. And I'm really grateful for that, because at this point, I don't do anything without having some visual-thinking component. It's just how I work and how I think and how I explain things to people. So it just changed everything about how I function. It's really grateful. 

Douglas: That's really cool. You know, it also makes me think about active listening and how one of our skills as a facilitator for active listening is paraphrasing. And if you think about it, only one person can paraphrase at one time because if we were all doing that, it would be cacophonous insanity and the whole power of paraphrasing would be diminished because we're all talking over each other. But if someone's Livescribing or if the whole room is Livescribing, everyone's essentially paraphrasing but in a non-auditory sense, right?

Sunni: Mm-hmm, yeah. That's why I teach it to educators and then they teach it to students, because when you're typing—I mean, there's a lot of research about typing versus writing in terms of notetaking, and the research is very clear that when you use visual notetaking instead of typing on your laptop and just trying to, like, bang out as much as you can based on what the teacher's saying, and similarly with handwriting, the knowledge and the insight is much, much deeper when you're using visual networking because you're synthesizing. So you're actively distilling content on purpose, and you're discerning what to believe and what to put on the page, and then you map it to some kind of icon or image so it comes to life. And so I think that that experience is true for everybody. I mean, I taught it all over the world, and it's not ever been somebody who was like, "No, I prefer my laptop typing in terms of knowledge acquisition." Like, I've never met that person, you know?

Douglas: Yeah, absolutely. You know, it also dawned on me. Has the research explored the notion of the spatial aspect of—

Sunni: Uh-huh.

Douglas: —handwritten notes? Because if you think about typed notes, it's direct to linear; it's always left to right; it's up, down—

Sunni: Yeah, totally.

Douglas: —it's squares; it's edges.

Sunni: There's no structure.

Douglas: Yeah. You have that structure is enforced upon you.

Sunni: Right.

Douglas: And if you're having to think through that structure or just flow through it and even move your hand to the upper right and over here and down, it's not so liberal—it's more liberating, maybe.

Sunni: Yeah, that's right. And Tony Buzan has this great page where he talks about that most kids perceive notetaking as punishment. They refer to it as punishment because that's how it feels, because they're confined and constrained by what you can do. And so when you make the page like a blank space, it's basically a field to plan, and then you can show relationships between things, and you can show spatial content that has an architecture that is inherently not in listing or in writing lists. And so there's, like, nine other things that he—He has a great book, Mind Map that he's original. But it just describes how it's like a black-and-white versus a color television. It's just a whole different world. And so it's universally impactful in that way. 

So it was easy for me to fall in love with it after I got over myself, you know? I was like, "Oh, shit, this is like a power tool, and nobody knows it." Like, very few people were interested in it or thought it was worth exploring, and it was sort of something you put on the side, like you go to art class and do that, or you be weird and do that. Like this guy—

Douglas: Or these geeks in the corner of the conference just plugging away.

Sunni: That's right. And so I was, like, well, I would like to normalize the shit out of this. And so I was very passionate about it for a long time. And at this point, I've exhausted that passion. But I don't need to have it because other people have it now. So I'm like, "Cool. The torch has been passed, and more power to all of you."

Douglas: And we talked a little bit about that earlier in kind of the preshow chat. We both have books coming out on the non-obvious press, and I was asking you about—

Sunni: Mm-hmm. Yeah. You're writing the one I wanted to write, you old buster.

Douglas: You know, you were writing a book on graphic recording.

Sunni: Yeah. It was, like, rapid doodling. Yeah. 

Douglas: Yeah. And I was curious to hear about that. And you said, "Oh, I wasn't inspired." 

Sunni: Yeah.

Douglas: I mean, you were explaining how you kind of lost the flame a bit—

Sunni: Right.

Douglas: —because you've been doing it for a while—

Sunni: Yes.

Douglas: —and you know it in and out. 

Sunni: Yes. 

Douglas: And it's hard to take that kind of new—

Sunni: Yeah. Like, the beginner's mind. It's such an important state of mind and that my relationship with that is not in that state. So I couldn't strongarm my way into writing that book.

Douglas: And I love how meta that experience for you and going through the conversation with the publisher was in relation to the topic you're actually going to write about, because you talked about not being part of your being or your state right now, the passion right now. And so it must have felt inauthentic.

Sunni: It did. Yeah, it did. It felt forced, for sure. And I told him that I could do it. It's like, it's not that I don't have the ability to sit down and type some shit on a page that makes sense. Like, I can do it. But why would I do that? What is the value of a factory? Like, I'm not a factory. And I mean, I can be, but I don't want to be. And I just was like, fuck it. I'll just—you know, he can get mad at me. I mean, I literally woke up that morning. I was like, what if he sued me? I was like, I don't know what he's going to do. No idea what he was going to do. Because he had the whole—all of our books were going to be published in a certain time, remember? Like, all together. So I didn't—

Douglas: And then COVID happened.

Sunni: That's right. And I was hoping that he would have considered that and that some of his other off—because you turned yours in on time, did you not? 

Douglas: Yes. And—

Sunni: Well, that's what I mean. So it didn't affect you. Ugh, god.

Douglas: Well, we're not on time.

Sunni: Yeah, but you're—

Douglas: We turned it in, but then there was a lot of edits—

Sunni: Right, right.

Douglas: —so we're still hard at work on it. But it's great. 

Sunni: That's awesome.

Douglas: I found working with them to be really fantastic from a—

Sunni: Oh, good.

Douglas: —get it right—let's take the time to get it right.

Sunni: Uh, yeah. He's awesome, and he really impressed me that day. And so it was nice to arrive at the topic that I am interested in, I have something to say about. And for me, the most energetic time when I'm learning something is where I'm completely convinced that it's valuable. I have internalized quite a bit of it, but I haven't, like, reverse engineered what it is that I did. So it's like when I was a graphic recorder, I was doing that. I had some training, but I basically trained myself. And then I studied what I was doing. And then I was like, oh, wow, that's really interesting. So for me, it's like that was similar with the deep-self-design stuff. It's like I've been applying and practicing this stuff for, like, 13 years, and now I'm studying what I'm doing because I want to teach it. So I apparently have these cycles of that. And I was not in that cycle with rapid doodling for problem solving. And I was like, why would I fake this? This is just completely not true for me at all. So thankfully, Rohit was awesome, and he was, like, "Great. I don't want you to write that." And I almost kissed him through the screen. I was like, "God bless you," because it was getting painful.

Douglas: And what's the title of the new book?

Sunni: Well, I don't know yet exactly. It's still in process, but it's something about the "non-obvious guide to being confident," or maybe "to enter confidence." And then the subtitle is "without being arrogant or inauthentic," something like that.

Douglas: Yeah. And I love this notion of confidence is really important when it comes to facilitation. That's why we both run facilitation practices just to get people experience with the tools and with new ways of doing things. And I also feel that authenticity matters so much. The authenticity allows us to be confident and vice versa. They kind of have this interesting dual purpose or this kind of linked connectedness.

Sunni: And I've always been confused by, what is authenticity? What does it even mean? And it's similarly with integrity. So this is just like a sort of weird question philosophically, which is, if you're authentically being manipulative, like you're totally committed to that activity, then that's not inauthentic. It's un-optimal. It's suboptimal for who you're dealing with. But, like, Trump is authentically an asshole. Do you know what I'm saying? 

Douglas: Mm-hmm. Yes, I do know what you're saying.

Sunni: So I don't even know when people describe—because I do often get described as authentic. My mother-in-law—well, she's family so she could be blowing smoke up my ass—but she's often like, authenticity is just your engine. And it took me a while. I was like, I don't even know what she's talking about. But then finally, I came up with this definition, so I want to run it by you and see what you think. So what it is, maybe, is—and I'm sure there are people who've done this research, so I'm right on the edge of doing all this great research—which is your internal experience is matched to your external expression. So in other words, what I'm feeling internally—so if I'm feeling disappointment because somebody didn't respond to my text—when I talk to them, I say, "I'm experiencing disappointment about your lack of responding to me, and I'm interpreting it." So I'm just saying what's true for me. I'm just speaking what— So I think that's what it is. And that's really hard for people, apparently. What do you love about it?

Douglas: Well, you know, it's the same thing as like I think people as a society, we have been primed to not disappoint people and to avoid conflict, and so that forces people to be inauthentic—

Sunni: That's true. So true.

Douglas: —because they're in pursuit of this vibe or this experience or to avoid. It's like to minimize your—

Sunni: Yeah. Conflict avoidance is huge, yes. Yes. 

Douglas: Yeah. And it's the same thing as you get a birthday present you don't like, and you're, "Oh, I love it."

Sunni: Right.

Douglas: It's like that incongruency of what you're saying and what you're feeling. 

Sunni: Yeah. Right.

Douglas: And imagine you walk into a room and you know that you need to pump up that room and get everyone excited. 

Sunni: Right. But you're not feeling it yet.

Douglas: You're not feeling it. And there's a pit in your stomach that you are not that is you're not being authentic.

Sunni: Well, that, I think, creates anxiety, though, right, because when we're trying to defy our actual internal experience, that is anxiety provoking. So that's problematic. And it's not like I nail it every time, but I definitely have a high fidelity to what my experience is and what my truth is, and then I share that. But I'm not undiplomatic. 

So it's interesting what you're saying about the gift. When somebody gives you a gift and you don't really love it, but you're honoring that they gave it to you, that can still be an authentic experience because you may not love it, but you love that they gave something to you, that they thought of you, right?

Douglas: Right. So why not? Why is it not customary that we say that?

Sunni: I don't know. I don't think our culture is skillful. I think our culture is really immature in a lot of areas. And communication and conflict is one of them, a big one.

Douglas: Yeah. In our facilitation training, we often work with folks to think about how they can tap into their inner self. And you go much deeper into the internal family-system stuff. The stuff that we're saying to do is at least just check in.

Sunni: Yeah, totally.

Douglas: Does your foot hurt?

Sunni: Right.

Douglas: Does your stomach hurt?

Sunni: Yeah. Connecting to your body.

Douglas: Does it feel hot? Is there a tension in the room? Are you bringing that tension? Are you noticing it? Is that tension impacting you?

Sunni: Yeah. Right. That's so helpful, though, Douglas. People are so oblivious to their own states. And that is also anxiety provoking. When you're divorced from your own experience, how could you not be stressed? How could that not be stressful? 

To your point, I do go deep, and I love that. But it's also, what you're doing with people, that's a revelation for a lot of people. Just like, oh, oh, I do. I am hungry. Oh, I have no idea. Or oh, I am disappointed that I wasn't seated with my friend. You know, just anything. And then I often do at the beginning of sessions, I will have them name something that's true for them. And just that simple act of checking in, becoming aware of your state and yourself, and then declaring it, it's like returning to yourself just for a second. And it brings you into the present moment, and it's really helpful.

Douglas: Yeah. Any time we can have some sort of presence-ing activity in an opener, it's really powerful.

Sunni: I know. And you know what's funny, talking about authenticity? I think I was with you one time when we—I have people often draw, like, just in virtual facilitation, they'll draw some emotion on a sticky note. And I will just ask, "What is your state of emotion right now?" and then draw an emoji. And then, you know, the ones that are permissible, right—there's permissible, social, emotional experiences. So it'll be like, the craziest one might be that someone's frazzled, but they would never be like, "I'm depressed," you know?

Douglas: Mm-hmm.

Sunni: No— So there's social norms in that. And again, it's like, is that inauthenticity, or is that caretaking of the group, or is that not even knowing maybe how you feel? It's like, just, it's complex, you know?

Douglas: Yeah. It's interesting because if you're intentionally trying to deceive you being authentic—there's different levels, are you being authentic to yourself? There is intention. And then someone else could perceive you as being inauthentic because you're like, wait, he's totally lying to me. So, yeah.

Sunni: Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's right.

Douglas: And integrity, I think, is easier for me because I always define integrity—because it shows up on so many companies' values statements, and I don't even know—I think most of the time they don't think about what it means. It's like, oh, yeah. It needs to say integrity.

Sunni: They don't even know what it is.

Douglas: Resourcefulness. 

Sunni: They're like, everybody wants that, for sure.

Douglas: Integrity is just you do what you say you're going to do.

Sunni: Say you're going to do? So, okay, what if I say I'm going to throw water on Chet when he's sleeping? 

Douglas: That's integrity.

Sunni: And then I do it.

Douglas: You follow through. But if you say you're going to build a wall and you don't build a wall, that's not a lot of integrity.

Sunni: But that means that Hitler had integrity, right? So it's like if you say—and it's controversial, but based on that definition, that would mean that, that he followed through.

Douglas: Yeah. But that's the thing. I think people that take these words and they glorify them as being good qualities.

Sunni: Yeah, they don't mean anything.

Douglas: And sure, if you have good intent—like, you had to combine them with other things because—that segues nicely into something that we were getting excited about during the preshow chat. And this is just good versus bad, and in binary thinking, how dangerous it is.

Sunni: Yeah, it is. It's one of the thinking distortions. So there's a really great list of thinking distortions that has, like, eight on it. But this also segues into Zen practice, which is central to my entire life. But one of the thinking distortions is making things binary. And it's so tempting. And I do it even though I have a devout practice around not doing that, where I'm seeing the nuance. It's still, it's the brain. Like, we are wired to summarize very quickly for survival purposes. It's not like we're bad if we do that. That is just biologically, it's like a biological imperative. And so in order to soften that inclination to just label somebody as, like, stupid or smart; or a desirable, undesirable; or deplorable and undeplorable; or whatever, we have to practice. You actually have to activate the antithesis of that way of thinking by purposefully seeing the shades of gray. It is a practice, and it's super powerful. 

And so I like that you're interested in that, too, because as facilitators, I gamify this stuff. I try to teach people that in gaming. That one in particular always blows people's domepieces off because they're like, "Oh, my god, I completely thought my boss was a jerk just by definition." And I'm like, "Did you consider all the other facets of your boss?" And they're like, "No." I'm like, "Why would you? It's not a practice you have."

Douglas: You know, I think that it applies across the spectrum, too, right? A lot of times, especially folks that are brand new to facilitation, they're so curious. Like, how do I deal with difficult people? And that, first of all, is binary thinking. The fact that you're asking that question means that you're thinking there's non-difficult people and difficult people.

Sunni: You're assuming. Right, yeah. And it's funny because when I started facilitating, I never asked that question. I wasn't worried about it. And I think that has to do with conflict avoidance, too. So if people are asking that question, underneath it is a fear that they're going to have to deal with conflict or perceived conflict. And conflict avoidance was not my family strategy. So I usually turn toward it and address it, depending on the depth of the wounding or whatever. But it's like, it's not fearful for me. 

And also, I haven't encountered these "difficult" people. I know there are people that can talk over other people, and there are people that want to ask a lot of questions and sort of can derail some of your activities. I know there are people that try to sidle up to you and make alliances with a facilitator. But I don't think of them as difficult. I think of them as people, just human people.

Douglas: What about the people that are desperately trying to help you?

Sunni: Oh, I love those people. It's always—that's so, so sweet because it's like, how do you say "No, thank you. You're going to make it way harder on me if you try to help"? Right? Because when I was a graphic recorder, I used to always carry these big walls, you know? You got to carry these 32-square-foot walls everywhere, and you would not believe how many people tried to help me because I was 5'5" and they'd be like, "She can't carry that up four flights of stairs." And I'd be like, "It weighs two pounds. It's not hard." But I would always just very gently be like, "No. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your interest. But it'll go smoothly if I just do it because I've done it so many times." But there are all those types in meetings. 

But to your point, what does it mean if they're difficult? Maybe they just need something, and they need you to be aware of it. And you just look for the need, the underlying need, and see if you can support that or not.

Douglas: You know, I really liked Michael Wilkinson's framing on this. I think in his book—I forgot. It's so many secrets of facilitation. I can't even remember how many there are. There might be, like, let's just say, so many secrets of facilitation.

Sunni: They're secrets?

Douglas: Yeah, well, he's unveiling the secrets of facilitation.

Sunni: What?! The secret teachings?

Douglas: Yeah. It's amazing. So, his whole thing is dysfunctions. How do you deal with dysfunctions? And so I liked that framing a lot better because there's all sorts of them, and how do we think about addressing them as they happen? And the individuals aren't dysfunctional.

Sunni: Right. 

Douglas: Maybe eliciting a dysfunction at that moment.

Sunni: Yeah. Or like a malfunction, yeah.

Douglas: Yeah. 

Sunni: You know? A little breakdown. 

Douglas: A little short circuit, which is an amazing—

Sunni: And I have those, too, you know?

Douglas: I mean, when are they going to come out with, like—so they've done E.T. with Stranger Things. They've done Karate Kid with Cobra Kai. When are they going to come out with the Short Circuit, like the modern Short Circuit?

Sunni: Oh, dude. How can they top the original? It'd be so hard. It'd be impossible. Oh, my god, I've got to watch that tonight. It's Friday night. Thank you for picking my movie.

Douglas: There's something about Cobra Kai that I was—

Sunni: Dude.

Douglas: —thinking about earlier. But—

Sunni: Oh, my god, yes.

Douglas: —I think it's just this notion of this good versus bad.

Sunni: Yes.

Douglas: You know, I was thinking about that when we were talking about good versus bad. 

Sunni: Yeah.

Douglas: And it's really interesting to me how the more naive Karate Ki— even though, like, look, let's face it. Cobra Kai is like a series that is not really any kind of profound wisdom. But it's funny that the more naive version of Karate Kid was, like, Danny's just like, and Miyagi, are just like the source of good.

Sunni: Yes.

Douglas: And now, the more modern portrayal, as they're older, they're much more complex, you know?

Sunni: Right.

Douglas: They're both doing things that you're like, why?

Sunni: And that's the truth about people is that we're complex. And that's what people don't want to grapple with, because it requires an awareness of things that can't be tucked into a box really neatly. And the brain, it does not like that. The brain is—I mean, sometimes it's stimulated by it. But ultimately, it needs a summation. And so it's like that's why you have all these characters that are easy to hate, like in Inspector Gadget. What's the dude, Claw? He doesn't even have a face. He's just the bad dude behind the desk, without a face. And then when you look at comic books or graphic novels, they always go into their backstory. I mean, Black Panther, they nailed it by making those characters so complex. That, to me, felt relatable. So it's, like, so fascinating how that starts from storytelling when you're five, you know? Even Star Wars. But I love Star Wars because, dude, I don't—

Douglas: Hero's journey. 

Sunni: Yeah.

Douglas: I mean, you kind of can't go wrong with the hero's journey. In fact, that's something Daniel Stillman and I talk about a lot, using that in your workshop design.

Sunni: Mm-hmm. Hm, interesting. Like, taking each person through some transformational experience related to the content?

Douglas: Yeah. Basically, from start to finish, we're going to go through this hero's journey, where we go into the abyss and come out together with the elixir.

Sunni: Oh, that makes me just want to weep, it's so beautiful. And it's like even if you don't choose—because part of the journey, you have to answer the call. So life will probably summon you. But if you don't answer, then you don't go on the journey, you know? And I've always been fascinated by people that are not available for the journey, because it's just not safe. I mean, it's not, by definition. But for me, it's always worth it to step into challenges. And I think that is also a quality of entrepreneurs, is that we are kind of thrilled by freaking ourselves out.

Douglas: Uncertainty, ambiguity.

Sunni: Yes, dude. We're like those people that like it. We're kind of into it. And over the years, I've had to temper my own instinct to do that. And I know you have too. I mean, I've been a workaholic for a long time, and I'm, like, in recovery. But it's also just because I like being challenged, and I like not knowing everything, because it's such a thrill when you get some new insight or knowledge. It's like, I feel like I'm like the Hulk. I'm like, whoa, I'm growing muscularly. I'm huge. But you could get addicted to that, so it's like every now and then I'm always, like, on a weekend I'm like, girl, you don't need to, like, read 40 sutras this weekend. You can just be an idiot, just be an idiot, you know?

Douglas: Yeah. Just give the brain a little break. Go on a nature bath.

Sunni: Yeah! You know, I told you I'm going to install my hillbilly hot tub. Is that okay to s—? You got—I know. I want—

Douglas: My sauna's getting installed right as we speak.

Sunni: Oh, dude. That's amazing. 

Douglas: It's important. 

Sunni: It is. 

Douglas: Yeah. As you were talking about this, some metaphors were coming up for me, around we're taking people through this risky kind of thing, and there is risk that you're taking. And it reminded me of rapids, right? 

Sunni: Yeah. 

Douglas: So whitewater rafting. And you always hire the guide so that you don't go kill yourself. 

Sunni: Yeah.

Douglas: Facilitation's like the mental equivalent of the whitewater-rafting guy. 

Sunni: Yeah, yeah.

Douglas: If we're going to go on this risky mental journey, let's make sure we have a shepherd or that guide to make sure that—we're going to wear helmets, of course, but we're going to make sure that we don't bash our heads on the rocks even if we have helmets on.

Sunni: Well, and that's why the facilitator is so important, because they have to trust you completely. And I don't mean they have to, meaning you can't conduct a meeting, but for a successful experience, they really need to trust you. And you, the way that I think about it, is that I demonstrate how I want them to be. So if something goes wrong, I will name that and own that, you know? If I don't have the answer to something, I will not pretend that I do. If I want somebody to collaborate with me, then I will invite them to come and collaborate with me, and then mimic that in their group. So it makes you more human in some ways if you're—I mean, there's every kind of facilitator under the sun, so it's not like there's some gold standard or whatever. That's just my style, is I want them to understand that perfection is not what we're up to. We're up to being humans. And so—

Douglas: I think that's authenticity, right there.

Sunni: Yeah. Yeah, that's true. But I could be being, like, what if I had an inner—because I have an inner perfectionist. I'm actually working with this part of me that is authentically perfectionistic, you know? 

Douglas: Well, I meant the vulnerability you're talking about. Like, if you don't know the answer—

Sunni: Yeah, let's just name it.

Douglas: —we're going to talk about it.

Sunni: Yeah. And I've been making so many bloopers. Douglas, you would not believe the bloopers on the United Nations project, because I'm learning as I go. And I told you that. It's like we're leaping, and we're building our parachute while we're falling. And the client's not that aware of it. That is an internal awareness that Jessie and I both have. But for me, it's like, oh, my god—it's like I'm back to being a newbie, like, the stuff I do. Like, the other day, I just flung everyone into breakout rooms, just because I impulsively pushed the fucking button. It was like, what do you do? And then—

Douglas: Well, that's the world we're in. 

Sunni: I know. It's so crazy.

Douglas: It's going to happen, even—I've run the breakout rooms in Zoom daily—

Sunni: Yeah, I bet.

Douglas: —and I still hit things accidentally. And that's partially because—here's the thing. I don't know if you've seen the book, The Design of Everyday Things. 

Sunni: Uh-uh.

Douglas: Oh, man. It's a classic design book. So great.

Sunni: I know. I've heard of it. I don't have it, though.

Douglas: In fact, the doors that are poorly designed are actually named Norman Doors, after the author.

Sunni: Aw.

Douglas: Well, because he points out, don't blame yourself because the door is poorly designed.

Sunni: Right.

Douglas: If there is a giant—like, you ever gone up to a door that has a giant handle on it?

Sunni: Uh-huh.

Douglas: And you're supposed to just grab the handle and pull it toward you?

Sunni: Yeah.

Douglas: And you pull it, and then it doesn't move because you're supposed to push it?

Sunni: Push it.

Douglas: So on the push side, there needs to be a push plate, and on the pull side, there needs to be a pull handle.

Sunni: Right. Like, you're not the dope here.

Douglas: Yeah. Exactly. You're not the dope. He said, never blame yourself for bad design if someone designed it poorly. And so that's what everyone does. Like, my mom always tells me, I don't understand computers. I'm like, well, that means they didn't design it so that you could understand it.

Sunni: Aww, that's very nice of you to say that. Because it does make people feel stupid when they can't do things.

Douglas: Yes. People always say they're stupid when it's like, man, someone did a poor job of getting you there.

Sunni: Yeah.

Douglas: And I think Zoom breakout rooms have a lot of room for growth.

Sunni: Yeah. And I think they're working on that, and I know they're making new features and changes to how it—

Douglas: Yeah.

Sunni: Like, they just did the Gallery View. You can shuffle it around.

Douglas: That's right.

Sunni: That's another thing, too, though. It's like all these new things constantly coming, so there's capabilities you don't even know you have, and then there's some that fall off. So it's just a constantly changing environment. And so I've just made mistakes left and right, and then I remember what it's like to be a beginner. And thankfully, I have this foundational practice and that confidence about facilitating and making mistakes and just knowing that it's okay. But if I were a beginning facilitator, it would be so stressful. It'd be super stressful to try to step in.

Douglas: Absolutely. And the thing is, you just found—in a way it's almost like fracking—you hit the depths of what's possible. You would become an expert in facilitation. And then this new fissure opened up because of remote, and now there is a new area to play in and a new area to fail in. But at the same time, you weren't building a parachute while falling. You know what I mean? You were in the squirrel suit, already at terminal velocity—

Sunni: I was already in my gear.

Douglas: And as you're floating down, you're like, "Oh, let me assemble a parachute, because then I'm going to float down even slower."

Sunni: That's right. Yeah, that's right.

Douglas: So I think there's something beautiful in that, right, because you can lean on the experience you have to then go into new, uncharted territory.

Sunni: Yes.

Douglas: And that uncertainty, while it's scary, also leads to a lot of opportunity.

Sunni: Totally. And that's why I love facilitating with expert facilitators, because we all know that. A lot of the stuff, a lot of the terrors and the weird delusions and the distorted ideas you have about the practice when you first go are gone. They're just burnt off by experience. And then, so, it's just, there's a lot of joy for me, because I online I always have a co-facilitator if it's longer than, like, an hour and a half. You know what I mean? And I love trusting the capacity of that person, because it's crazy, because the other day, Jessie and I were like, I could tell she was looking for something in the back end of Zoom, and I could see from her body language that she had no clue where it was. And so I just started talking. I was like, "Here's why we're doing this, and this is the value of it. And I ask the people questions." And I was just doing it to fill in the gaps so that she could—because I looked at her again. I was like, "Okay, she found it," and now I'm going to close. But that's like a tango that we have because we work together so often. But it's just, it's very sweet. It's a very sweet process to have.

Douglas: What you're describing is so much harder in the virtual space, too, because of the signals we have. When we're in the room together—

Sunni: Totally.

Douglas: —and vibing, whether it's Daniel or John or Eli or any of the facilitators I've facilitated with quite often, it's like you can feel it almost in the air. Like, we don't even have to make eye contact necessarily. It's just like, "Oh, I know they're still riffing." And then, you know, it's almost like when you can tell someone's looking at you. So when they're done looking at you and ready, like, better if you just got the— So I feel like what you were doing is a pro move to be tearing through the tools and trying to revisit the vague signals we do have in virtual.

Sunni: Yeah. It's so funny you're talking about this because Jessie and I were talking about this this morning. When you're asking about my origin story, so part of my early conditioning had to do with hyper vigilance. So I was very aware of what emotional state people were in and what their next move was likely to be. So I'm really attentive to body language. And that, for me, is still very available in Zoom. I mean, I can tell—and Jessie was making fun of me this morning. She was like, "Oh, my god, girl. You name people that they have a question before they have even unmuted themselves or even know they have a question." But it's because I'm watching their body language. When people are about to ask a question, they do things. They move forward. They lean toward the camera. They kind of, like, gesture in these bizarre ways. Sometimes they stop and start. And so for me, that visual and gestural information is still there. So I'd just be like, "Hey, Frank, it seems like you want to say something." And then Jessie was just like—she was making fun of me, because she was like, "That is so weird that you—" but I'm so sensitive to it, you know? And I thought that was normal, but then I realized, oh, yeah, no, that's my trauma. Basically, that's the gift of trauma.

Douglas: You know, that was one of the things that really jumped out to me when you were telling me about internal family systems and giving me the whole low-down there, and I found it really fascinating that things that were previously traumatic or these—I can't remember the Internal Family Systems parlance—but these guards, these managers, that were created because of old wounds are part of yourself. And they can be, they can sometimes be disruptive, but they can also serve a function. They can give you superpowers that other people don't have.

Sunni: Yeah, they do. Absolutely. They're 100 percent really powerful. And that's one of mine is I have a manager who's very watchful, and so it is a super power. Now, the problem is I can't turn it off. So, like, if I'm, for example, in mediating between my husband and his mom, it will kind of be exhausting for me because I know that they're going to have an argument 10 minutes before they do, because I can see where the tones are changing and what the language, how the language is changing. I can see them turning, body language turning away from each other. I can see a color of their skin gets redder and redder. But they're not, like you were saying, people are not aware of what's happening internally to them. So they're not yet aware. So for both of them, the energy, the intensity has to be a certain threshold before they even notice. But for me, I notice it way early. And it's exhausting because I'll just be like, "Dudes. I'm going to walk out now. Five, four, three, two. Okay, your mom's pissed." It's funny.

But as a facilitator, it's really useful. It's a really useful skill, and I'm grateful for the spontaneous—like, going back to IFS, the spontaneous creation of these skill sets based on—and it's not always from trauma. It's just from navigating life, you know? But there is a spontaneous creativity that the body and the mind does to meet whatever circumstances are there. And that's why I have such gratitude for how wise and skillful all of our systems are. So even if a person is "difficult," I respect that there's some aspect of what they're doing that is a protective function and that that's quite healthy for their system. So I just have a deeper, a kind of an abiding appreciation for malfunctions and for strategies that people have, because I'm like, dude, I am the same way. We're designed the same way. I get it, you know? And I just respect it.

Douglas: Yeah. It's amazing to see what strategies other people use and which ones that we can authentically borrow versus things that maybe I don't want to touch that. Maybe that's not such a good tool for me.

Sunni: Yeah. I wonder how many you can borrow, because there are qualities that other people have that I wish that I had. And I kind of admire that they have them, but I don't personally have them myself. Like, what example?

Douglas: From an internal family systems, I doubt there's much borrowing we can do unless we do some deep, long work. I was thinking more from the surface level of, that's an interesting strategy. Ooh, I like the way that they're asking folks to… Who haven't we heard from next? I think there's a lot of fun little prompts and questions and things that we can borrow from folks. But it's critical that we do it authentically. If it doesn't feel comfortable in your belly when you're saying it, maybe leave that one at home.

Sunni: Right. Aww, I know. It's so insightful what you're saying about you can't really borrow them, because I always think about coaches and coaching and why would that work in terms of if you're trying to say, like, if somebody hires a coach to be more assertive, it's like, well, you could hack it. You could put on an assertive demeanor. But it wouldn't really be born of your essence. You wouldn't really be the source of it. So I always think it's interesting, the methods that coaches use to attempt to get great things from people. For me, it has to be natural for them. So you just want to unlock their natural strength.

Douglas: I like that word natural. I think that's very similar to how I think about authentic, is of being natural. 

I want to talk about the coaching thing for a second, though. You know, I think part of it is people not taking a robust definition of greatness. They've found some thing that they think is greatness, and then they're glommed onto it, and they're like, teach me how to… I think you were talking about, like, being more confident or whatnot. But what if people more generally said, "I just want to improve. And what does that mean to improve? And let's explore things more openly." I think that kind of coaching can be really, really interesting, right? Let's see how I can explore where my strengths create weakness. In some of the coaching work I've done, it's about how I figure out what I'm not good at, and then is it something that I can improve on? And if not, if it's truly a deep-seeded weakness, let's delegate that. But let's let that be a part of my self-awareness. Coaching should be about becoming more self-aware.

Sunni: That's right. And unburdening some of the parts of you, because you already have this constellation internally that is very capable, and you and me and everyone we know. But some of it is burdened. And so it has intense emotional charge that hasn't been released or it has belief systems that are old and archaic and need to be discarded. But then once they're unburdened, the energy and the natural expression of that aspect of you is just available, which is crazy because that's what Zen practice is all about too. Zen practice, there's the metaphor they use is like wiping dust from a mirror. So your mirror is already there. You can't change that. It's just who you are. It's part of the natural emergence of an incarnated being, is that you're like a reflection of the universe. And it just has dust on it. So the practice is about getting some of the dust off. 

There was a big reversal of the way I grew up, which was, like, oh, you're born in sin. And I was like, wait. So I'm just fundamentally fucked up? I was like, oh, I can't relate to that. But people do, you know? And so I think the approach of assuming beauty in the person and then just helping them release some of their inherent capacity is just a really benevolent way to approach coaching. But it's not that common.

Douglas: Sunni, it's been a pleasure chatting with you today. And just want to give you a chance to kind of close out, leave anyone with any final thoughts. Or I know that we've probably got a lot of folks that are really interested in how they can find out more about your work and what you do. So anything they should keep in mind?

Sunni: Well, I was thinking about your audience. They're mostly facilitators, right? They're people who are interested in that practice?

Douglas: Yeah. Our listeners are facilitators as well as leaders that are interested in these techniques and how they can improve their meetings and their employee experience. I think, generally, the audience are growing into just a general appreciation of how meetings could be better.

Sunni: Yeah. You're so good at what you do. If people are interested in a lot—I mean, you and I covered so many great topics that I'm like, "Oh, is our time up? It's so sad." But deepselfdesign.com has some good resources on it. And my other business that is the original venture is sunnibrownink.com. Those are both resources. And you can find me all over the Internet.

Outro: Thanks for joining me for another episode of Control the Room. Don't forget to subscribe to receive updates when new episodes are released. If you want more, head over to our blog, where I post weekly articles and resources about working better together, voltagecontrol.com.

"He's written a book called Finding a Place to Stand, and in that book he talks about citizenship. And he says people join organizations, but they are citizens to institutions. And I'm completely fascinated by that idea because he writes that when you are a citizen, you show it very differently because it is something greater than yourself. When you are a member of an organization, you are bound by the tasks...But you join an institution as a citizen because you say that when we combine our organizational lives, the institution is greater. When the impact of the institution is greater, that's when you become a citizen. And I think organizations have the capacity to create citizens." Tyrome Smith

In episode 15 of the Control the Room podcast, I am so pleased to be speaking with Tyrome Smith, Principal Consultant at Go-In, LLC. Tyrome has more than two decades of experience teaching senior leadership how to solve emerging issues in an ever-complex, rapidly changing world.

Tyrome and I speak about the BLM movement in relation to his background as a former police officer, the fear of irrelevance in the age of COVID, and how family dynamics leak into institutional structures. Listen in to find out to create space for people to create their own unique value for the greater good.

Show Highlights

[2:15] The parallels of group dynamics between families & organizations

[14:07] Having a plan until you're punched in the mouth

[16:18] BLM movement from the perspective of a former police officer

[27:54] The fear of irrelevance

[29:59] Human architecture

[38:11] Getting up and touching the walls

Links | Resources

Tyrome on LinkedIn

Email Tyrome

About the Guest

Tyrome Smith is the Principal Consultant at Go-In, LLC. He says his work can be summarized in one simple quote - "engaging potential, creating possibilities." For two decades, Tyrome has been working with senior leadership to adapt to and solve emerging, complex issues of the changing world.

Outside of his work at Go-In, LLC, Tyrome serves on the board of the AK Rice Institute, where he and the other board members multilayered complicated social systems.

Voltage Control is a facilitation agency that helps teams work better together with custom-designed meetings and workshops, both in-person and virtual. Our master facilitators offer trusted guidance and custom coaching to companies who want to transform ineffective meetings, reignite stalled projects, and cut through assumptions. Based in Austin, Voltage Control designs and leads public and private workshops that range from small meetings to large conference-style gatherings. 

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Intro: Welcome to the Control Room podcast. The series devoted to the exploration of meeting culture and uncovering cures for the common meeting. Some meetings have tight control and others are loose. To control the room means achieving outcomes while striking a balance between imposing and removing structure, asserting and distributing power, leaning in and leaning out all in the service of having a truly magical meeting. This episode is brought to you by a MURAL, a digital workspace for visual collaboration. At Voltage Control, we use MURAL to facilitate engaging and productive meetings and workshops from anywhere. MURAL gives teams the means, methods and freedom to collaborate visually. Use their suite of facilitation superpowers to control the virtual room and solve tough problems as a team with their pre-built templates and guided methods. To see for yourself why companies like IBM, Atlassian and E-Trade rely on MURAL, start your 30 day trial and mural.co. That's mural.co.

Douglas: Today, I'm with Tyrome Smith, principal consultant, at Go-In, LLC. The world is moving fast, Go-In can help you move faster. So excited to have you on the show today, Tyrome.

Tyrome: Thank you, sir. Good to be here.

Douglas: Excellent. So I guess for starters, I would love to hear how you got started in this work that you do. 

Tyrome: So I'm from Pennsylvania. My father used to be a police officer. He retired from the Pennsylvania State Police. And so when I was a 1985 graduate from high school, I knew I was going to college. That summer I graduate, I worked at McDonald's. Stank. The following summer. The police chief came to me and said, 'hey, I've got a position.' Very small town, by the way. 'Got a position. You interested?'

Now I'm a track and field guy, for a very long time. I was a state champion runner and high school hurdler, as a matter of fact. And I was like, sure, because it kept me close to my dad. All right. It gave me a way to connect with him. I did that for about four years on and off through college. I'd got some leadership roles in undergraduate school and that introduced me to a different way of thinking about the world. I decided I didn't want to do police work anymore. I started working with kids and I was utterly fascinated with what was happening with these children's lives. Went to graduate school at Howard University in 1993 and I came in about halfway through the first year. So I came in the winter. They had no more money, so I needed to find a job. And I went to work with...because I had worked previously with kids, went to work in a psychiatric hospital, and I saw things in community meetings that I did not quite understand. And so that following, I think it was that following fall, I took a class with a professor, Dr. Leroy Wells. Brilliant man. PhD in organizational dynamics out of Yale.

And he did some stuff on the board. It was a class, a group dynamics course. And he did some stuff on the board that just blew my mind because it was the same kind of dynamics that he was describing. I was seeing every day when I was working with these kids and what I came to find out is that those basic systems that we are all born into, either healthy or unhealthy, known as our family, replicate themselves in organizations. And out of that. I started working with kids a little bit more, but I moved away from working with kids in about 2000, started working with organizations. And it was still the same dynamic that I was seeing working with those children in different formats, with their families in different formats, I was starting to see in organizations. Now, there's a caveat to that, and that is I hate when people say, you know, we're like a family here because my family might be screwed up and yours might be great. So we're dealing with two different kinds of family systems.

But I understand why people want to do that, because they are using their group of note, the one that they grew up with. Out of that, I started dealing and working with more sophisticated organizations. I had an opportunity to work in New York City with a whole box office as a Vice President for Organizational Effectiveness over there for about a year and a half. And since then, about 2009, I've been working in the Department of Defense, in the intelligence community, working with senior leaders, helping them think about strategy, think about innovation, thinking about growth, thinking about what's happening in the world, and how do they manage their organizational designs to execute against value. And that's what I've been doing since, geez since 2009 with the same organization. It's great. I'm having a ball. Even in the pandemic. Actually, our work is even more important now because of the pandemic than it was probably before the pandemic, because the world is changing. The director of our agency says that if we come back in...oh, God bless the creek don't rise...in March of 2021 and we are doing the same things that we were doing in March of 2020, we will have lost. And so that's where I come from. 

Douglas: Incredible. It's great to hear all of that. And, you know, as I listened and thought about just the impacts of COVID on organizational development and even just behavioral elements of teams trying to relate to one another and in meetings in general, much less now that we're thrust in these new environments. So I'm curious what you're seeing, what's some low hanging fruit that people could start to think about. I'm sure there's some little things that they can do if they can't afford the big power, the big smart folks like yourself. 

Tyrome: Yeah. Be present, which is probably the most difficult thing, to be present for one another. I'm working with a group right now of really smart people and one of the gentlemen that your audience may know, his name is Tristin Kromer. He wrote me and he said, you know what happens if I get somebody's name wrong? If I mispronounce somebody's name? Because this group that we've been working on has been looking at the Black Lives movement, race and racism, and we've been thinking about that. And he said, what do I do if I get- is that being racist? I was like, no, that's not. What is being racist is when you're not present to the other person's experience, when you don't acknowledge their humanity.

And if you look at the word human, the root word to human is hum, H-U-M, and hum in Latin means ground. It is ground. And so what greater gift could you give somebody else than to ground yourself in their experience? And so I think for not just leadership, but for each other to ground ourselves, empathy, whatever you want to call it, to ground ourselves in their experience, so we could be a gift to them is probably the best thing that we could do in my estimation, that we could do for one another, particularly during the pandemic, because we are...we have been dislocated. We're like, we're engines with...very powerful boats with no rudder. There's a buddy of mine who was in the Air Force, he would kill me if he heard me say that, he was a Navy pilot. He said, we're all thrust and no vector right now. We were just moving, but we have no way to vector our energy. And so we feel lost. We feel dislocated, we feel somewhat dispossessed. We don't know where our jobs are anymore, where our values are anymore.

You know, the fact that people aren't going someplace to go to work. I'm dealing with an organization right now, a member of the organization I consult to, and the leaders are yeah I have people who have been working in the same job for 30 years that are now displaced and they can't go back into work. They are saying to themselves and to her, but I only know how to do work when I'm inside the building. I only know how to do my job when I'm inside the building. But she's saying that the customers that we have don't need our stuff from inside, they need to be able to create value. And you guys are valuable even when you're not in the building. What can you do? 'I don't. I don't. I can't. I can't do that.' I mean, literally scared. And so I'm working with her to kind of rethink what does that mean to hold people in a space where they don't have to feel fear, that they can still provide value, still move forward and do good work? 

It's important for each one of us to be present. I don't have to make you feel good. You know, Amy Edmenson talks about psychological safety, bright woman. I've had an opportunity to sit down and talk to her and hear her lectures, and we brought her into my agency to do some work- I mean to lecture. The idea that you can provide a safe space will create trust, but you can't ask somebody to trust you unless they feel safe. You know this. What is it? All dogs are animals. Not all animals are dogs. And so what can I do to help others feel safe? And I think that that's the biggest thing that we can do for one another is just be present right now. And that doesn't take, that doesn't take anything else but a little bit of commonsense. 

Douglas: I want to talk a little bit more about the humanity element of human and hum. And, you know, I think before the show started, we talked a little bit about our duty as citizens and how this work that we do could be applied in a much broader scope, in a more macro scope. So I'm curious to hear how you're thinking about citizenship and then, you know, kind of being there for the broader community. 

Tyorome: Thank you. I belong to an organization known as the AK Rice Institute. I'm on the board of that organization and the AK Rice Institute studies social systems, and one of the ways we study social systems is we go to that layer below how we would normally think about social systems. In other words, like who talks to who, when do we meet? But the layer below that is how do we understand each other? How do we, you know become a part of of each other's lives, kind of an unconscious level. And one of my fellow directors is a psychiatrist. He's written a book called Finding a Place to Stand. 

And in that book, he talks about citizenship. And he says people join organizations, but they are citizens to institutions. And I'm completely fascinated by that idea because he writes that when you are a citizen, you show it very differently because it is something greater than yourself. 

When you are a member of an organization, you are bound by the tasks. You are bound by the resources. You're bound by your role of getting things done. But you join an institution, think United States, you join an institution as a citizen because you say that when we combine our institu- our organizational lives, the institution is greater. When the impact of the institution is greater, that's when you become a citizen. 

And I think that organizations have the capacity to create citizens. It's when - institution, not organization, don't want to mix up my metaphors. That institutions can create citizens. But they can't do it without some kind of notion of where we're going. Northstar, strategy, whatever you want to call it, that says when we combine our efforts, we will get to that place. And that's when you can see people say, 'oh, I now know how I work with you to create something greater than I individually can do.' That's when citizens show up.

Now, are all citizens the same? Well, the history of the United States would suggest no. But how do we create and claim citizenship? Sometimes it's leaders being present. I hear you. I am here for you. I understand. I am selflessly putting myself in place so that I can marshal resources, so I can marshal ideas. Sometimes it's citizens standing up for their place. I will be seen. I have an idea. If this is an organization, how do we create space for our corporate citizens to do the right thing? 

The organization that I'm with now, the small team, nicely small, we're...the agency is well over 10,000 people. But my team is five people big. Six, soon to be five, five people big. And we are saying to folks as they go out, 'how do you create space to create innovation?' Because right now they all get targeted for their- we would know this, their KPIs are how many things that you produce, not how much value did you create. And good leaders can create space for people to create value because good citizens find value. They understand what is valuable, what will create value for the greater good versus just for me.

People belong to organizations, make sure that the trains run on time but have no concept of why the trains are running.

Douglas: It makes me think that it really is about purpose and and what brings us all together.

Tyrome: Yeah, I think purposes is completely underrated. Why are we here? You know, Simon Sinek talks about start with why. 

During our training, we ask people to identify problems. We say 'ask as many, identify your problems and interrogate that problem by asking why as many times as you can.' And people have difficulty because they want to go to the how and the what. They have difficulty identifying the why. And I think institutions help people to identify the why. But institutions can be..can lose their way, become organizations. Does that make sense what I'm saying? 

Douglas: Absolutely. So organizations that want to behave more like institutions or maybe want to attract that institutional...those elements. What are some of the things that they can think about? 

Tyrome: Yeah, I think those are the organizations that have the capacity to interrogate their own value, but that takes very, very sophisticated leadership, selfless leadership, ones who are saying, 'but are we in a position that we want to be? '

Ones that...Steve Blank says,he wrote a very similar article, maybe some of your audience may have read it. H.B article so I think it's titled. The proper title is Why the Lean Startup Changes Everything. 

And then he says, he quotes that pugilist philosopher Mike Tyson that says everybody has a plan until they punched in the mouth. Right. And for me, it's the institutions that can bounce back from the punch in the mouth. It's like oh! Don't do that again. Now, pivot. The arrogant institutions, the ones that don't learn...and maybe that's where I'm going, the ones that can attract are the ones that are learned for, that have an intention to learn. The ones who get punched out and say, oh, don't do that again. The ones that will continue to be organizations will be the ones that will say, yeah, but we're still going to go this way because that's where we say we're going to. And I'm right. And I know that that's right. I was just listening to another podcast the other day, and this is what I think it was Dwight wrote the big shift in about 2010 and it keeps coming up that those organizations that used to be the bluechip top 50+ that were the Mobiles of the world, the G.E.'s of the world, they have been delisted off the bluechip, and now the blue chip ones are the ones that are constantly in an effort to understand their environment. 

Douglas: Tyrome,I'm really curious, you know, given all this work that you're doing with organizations and understanding how to help them innovate, help them move past big roadblocks or incumbents, that might be kind of hard to move past or, you know, upstarts that are challenging the status quo. And you're very familiar with an institution that is challenged at the moment. You know, you mentioned Black Lives Matter earlier and the police are getting, you know, calls for being defunded, et cetera. I'm curious, as someone who's gone through that institution, knows what it's like, what the needs are, the good that it can do. I'm curious where your thoughts are as you apply the work you do through the lens of the change that needs to happen there. 

Tyrome: As a son of a police officer. As a former police officer for a while. As the brother of somebody who's been in law enforcement in the United States military, I recognize that it is an institution that is much older than anything that I think folks could really understand. The history of policing, the history of policing goes back to the slave catchers. 

They would go in. They were legally able to go back and recapture slaves. All the way up to, you know, to now. Right. The ethic of what policing was to do. It was a service to go back and execute against laws that were out there. Now, having been on that side. I recognize that there are laws and that you need people to help execute those laws, that you need people to help enforce those laws because it is for the part of society.

The book that I offered up before, Finding his Place to Stand...my psychiatrist colleague, he's 78 years old. And he said one time, he said as a result of what was going on with the Black Lives Matter, with policing, he said, I am...one of the things that he said that just struck me, struck me dead square in the chest, he said 'as a 78 year old white man, I am ashamed that I didn't realize that police in policing was there to protect my community from those others.' And that's a powerful statement as far as I'm concerned. 

That's a powerful indictment about how we've constructed this thing known as policing. So a long time ago. Full stop. A long time ago, I thought, could I use what I've learned about organizations, about the lives of organizations to help police officers rethink how they do community policing? I never explored it because it wasn't quite the right time. But now, as I'm talking to you, it brings me to the point where I'm like, maybe I really need to go back and rethink what that would look like to go back and help police officers rethink about what it means to be a community police officer. How do I integrate and utilize my authority in a way that it is to add to the lives of the community and not "detract" - big air quotes - "detract" from the lives of the community, so people see me as somebody who is a helpmate and not somebody who is a oppressor.

The stories about policing, at least in the black community, are old. You can go back and listen to some of the songs from the Harlem Renaissance. You can go back and listen to the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance. And they were talking about brutality. Way back there. And so it is a hard problem. It is a institutional problem. It is not an organizational problem. It's not about the police. It's about the institution of policing inside the larger institution of America. And I think the work that I do to help people solve these hard problems, to ask the problem to be solved is possible. You can actually do some brilliant work. I've seen people do brilliant work and come to some realizations and change their minds by asking these very simple, and I mean truly simple...I've thought about starting a podcast and my podcast- the title of the podcast was Hmm, Can I Ask You a Question? Because I believe simple questions lead to complex insights. 

Douglas: Yeah, let's unpack that a little bit, because I do feel like questions are the facilitator's superpower. So what are some of your favorite questions or the questions that you find typically will lead to some of these complex insights? 

Tyrome: So when we work with...my colleagues and I, when we work with organizations, we're trying to help them create a product, rethink a process, maybe even to the point of doing a reorganization. This is my everyday life. We ask for- and I just, we just developed a fifth question.

And the questions go, what problem you solving? Just plainly. What problem you try to solve? For whom are you trying to solve that problem? To do what to solve that problem? How will you know that you're on the way to solving the problem? And what's the one thing that the problem would really, really get to?

And the reason why we got to this fifth one, the first one we've been asking for a long time, but apparently- and a colleague of mine found this really interesting video about rowing a boat. It was the British. I think it was the '88 games. The '88 games. They were. The guy won. They won. The British won a gold medal. They had not won anything. And they kept their eye on the one thing that matters. And it was, will it make the boat go faster? Right. Will it make the bo- How do we cut our hair? How do we train? How do we pray? How do we get in the boat? How- what kind of shoes do we wear? What's our dinner like? You know, how do we manage our home life? Will it make the boat go faster? 

And so those are our five. What problem are you trying to solve? For whom to do what? How will you know? And what's that one thing that will make it better? What's that North Star that you're looking at? 

Douglas: I love this notion of the one thing, you know. I think it gets to the core of the essence of the problem. And so many meetings, so many gatherings, so many times when we come together to make a decision or to do some good work, if we're not clear on that. That's what can lead to all the circular conversation or these side chats. And, you know, this stuff that just slows is down. And I was thinking about a story you told about your own, the boat faster. And it immediately conjured up this image of, like, arguing over if they should enter the boat in some certain way or what color they should paint the boat. And all this stuff, it really helps you realize that wait a second. Our purpose is to make the boat go faster. The color is not going to matter. I'm not going to...I don't really have much of a fight. There's no reason to like, to spend too much time on this decision. 

Tyrome: Let's unpack that boat going faster thing. Right. So the color of the boat may not matter, but it's the joining of the team that gets to the color of the boat that does matter to make the boat go faster. You feel me?

Douglas: Yes, absolutely.

Tyrome: It's about can we join in a way that we are able to work? My colleagues and I that I work with, we believe that no matter how you show up to work with whoever you show up, if you show up to do the work, you can be there. To my colleagues, straight white men with children, we're going out to do some diversity work. They asked me how are we going to do diversity work? Because we're two straight white men with kids, I'm like yeah, just show up. Coming together. So they asked me as a- and I'm older than both of them...as an older black man, straight black man with two kids. Help us get together because we don't know if we'll be able to do the work. Can you help us? Not giving them permission, but can you help us think through it? Because I didn't give them permission. The only thing I give them permission to do was to be themselves, which they didn't need permission from me to do that. They just needed to show up and do the work. But our ability to collaborate across the boundary of our differences makes our team that much stronger.

That happened well over a year ago. And that team, except for one who got a really good job and went off and left us, that team is still together. And because we had the capacity to be honest with each other, what we call radical candor, and ask good questions and investigate each other's purposes. Man, you talk about a highly functioning team, but when you have a team that can't even come together, say, you know what? To your point, that's 'whatever, that doesn't even matter' what you're talking about but can't have the conversation about 'that doesn't even matter' and not get pissed off at one another and say that this is a part of our getting together and doing good work. So when we have to find that and work on that thing that's super important, we know what we need to do.

So the team comes together, says the boat should be painted his way. I don't agree. Well, let's talk about it. Let's figure it out. That's wonderful. OK, we figured it out. Now, that team that gets in that boat that won, the coxswain says pull harder. Do this. Everybody knows exactly what that means. There is no- and I don't even know what...I know the coxswain just yells at the rowers and yells something and they just pull harder. But the coxswain is now in that boat. And that team knows because it's for the good of the boat, it's for the good of the team, we will make this happen. And there is no argument.

The same thing happens...one of my colleagues is former Special Operations and my brother is as well. When you are six-deep and you are miles from anybody else that can provide support, and the only person you have to depend on is the other five dudes on your team, you dadgum sure better make sure that you can come to some coherent about what we're here to do, because if you don't, that's life and death. That's not just what are we going to eat tomorrow for lunch.

Douglas: Yeah. You know, I think there is a lot of interesting ritual in training for special operations around trust in your fellow officers and...because when it comes down to in the moment, it's life or death. I mean, that's ultimate trust, right? Like, we can't have any micro kind of guesses or take a moment to be like, 'well maybe.' It's like, no, you've got to be 100 percent. 

Tyrome: I'm curious about this idea of ritual and which rituals do we keep and which rituals do we let go of? 

Douglas: That's right. Which ones serve us and which ones get in our way? And here's the thing. I think you were talking about organizations that reinvent themselves versus the ones that are just, you know, maybe overly dogmatic and can't let go because maybe something served them for years and years and years. And I think that's the ritual that stifles us. But when we can create ritual that is adaptable, we can move beyond it. I'll also, I would argue, meta rituals too. Like rituals that are designed to be flexible by nature. 

Tyrome: Yeah, yeah. And as you're saying it, the power of ritual is to help us manage transition and uncertainty. Right. That's why we have ritual. That's why people salute- new military, they salute people. Because it helps us to manage the transition from an uncertain place to an uncertain place. An uncertainty is a certainty. And so I don't know what's going on, but at least I have this to stand on.

Douglas: It's their bedrock.

Tyrome: This makes sense. Exactly. Exactly. But I love your idea that if your rituals aren't adaptive to the context in which they live, you are at risk. 

Douglas: And the context is ever evolving, right? So we don't know what it'll be like tomorrow or the day after. 

Tyrome: Absolutely. I think that folks who say, 'I don't recognize this, this doesn't make any sense to me...' There's a sense of the dinosaur. I don't want to be that...I don't want to be that cavalier. But it's...are you paying attention to what's happening around you? And if you're not paying attention to what's happening around you, are you going to be around to influence it and to survive in it? And it doesn't mean that you don't continue some of the things that give you solve and comfort, right? But you need to be able to say 'this doesn't, this is no longer in the service of the work of us accomplishing the task.'

There are stories about when people walk into manufacturing facilities and they, you know they'll Lean Six Sigma when they try to do agile and they say- why are you doing it? 'Well, that's just how we do it.' What would happen if you cut that out? 'Well, uhhhhh uhhhh I don't know.' I would submit to you that it has two pieces. One, there's a technical piece to it. 'I don't know,' because they really don't know. They never took it out. But the other part is an unconscious and kind of meta, which is 'but if you cut that out, I don't have any more value. I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing now.' And I think that freaks people out even more. I think it's- as a matter of fact, I think that that's the bane of what we see as society today, is that if I am no longer in that space and am I important? That is scary. 

Douglas: Yeah, it's that fear of irrelevance.

Tyrome: Oh, my God, yeah. Yeah. And if I am irrelevant, am I important? Do I really exist? I mean this is existential stuff. I mean, I get it. But having people rethink their value, I think is the purview of good facilitation. It's the purview of good consultation. It's the purview of good coaching. Right? Helping people recenter and find themselves in terms of value. How they create value. That's an incredible piece of work if you can do that for folks. 

Douglas: Yeah. And, you know, I think it's maybe not only helping people become reflective of their own value, but also providing space where people can provide value outside of the thinly drawn lines that you've carved out for them to create value. 

So if we open it up and we say we've truly become inclusive...people talk about diversity, inclusion. But if we were to be truly inclusive, then we're allowing people to color outside the lines and to provide value in ways that we never anticipated. And then therefore, they see the road to providing more value, even if their current value is disrupted. 

Tyrome: It's interesting that Dug, that you say this because in the training we do, we talk about Frank Gehry, you know, follow up with the first idea. And we use the example of the Weatherhead School at Case Western University and this looks like just a plop of steel and glass and brick and how he came to that. And so not so much about Gehry, but about architecture. All right. How do we create architectures, human architectures that people can find space to exist? 

I'm not an architecture student, but I'm fascinated by this idea of creating, architecting, designing space so people can find space. And I think that our institutional architectures are so rigid because of ritual, are so rigid that when people ask for space, the institutions rebel against space. Now, if you follow the line of this conversation, that's followed back about 10 minutes and that's what policing does. Policing manages space. Because if you don't stay within your space. I have, Ty Smith, my dad Eugene Smith, have arrested people and taken to jail because they violated the space, the architecture, the social architectures of the institution. And I think what good leadership does, what good facilitation can do is help people to explore and interrogate that space so people can find space, find their own space and say, I belong here, too. Now, the question then becomes, do people...do those who constructed the space want other people to be included in the space? I don't know. I don't know. 

Douglas: Yeah, that's the thing I think is to make that shift between just having minions versus having citizens like you're talking about, making sure that when we look at the space we've created, that we give people the opportunity to self identify as to how they exist and to how they bring their best selves to the space. You know, it's interesting when I think of facilitation as a meta role where leaders start to adopt facilitated leadership styles. That's exactly what we're talking about. I love this notion of making constituents feel more like citizens. I love this idea of like, shaping space. You know, we may take the raw space that we already have allocated and we might carve it up in interesting ways. We may ask our citizens to help us make sense of the space so that we can carve it up and we can co create the decorations for that space so it's more inviting, it's better for- easier for them to understand. I love how this conversation was not very facilitator focused, but there's so many themes that apply to facilitation that is very clear to me. 

Tyrome: So it's interesting you say that Dug, because the metaphor then applies. I think that what you're offering up, the metaphor of the facilitator is architect, right? 

Douglas: Mhm, yes. In fact, the facilitators are the architects of the meetings. They're also the producer and the constructor or they're in the meeting live. But they have to plan. I would say 90 percent of facilitators' job is the upfront work before the meeting happens. And, you know, we have this belief at Voltage Control, that, you know, whether you call yourself a facilitator or not or you have facilitator in your title, if you invite people to a meeting and you're hosting that meeting, you are facilitating that meeting. Whether or not you're intentional about it or whether or not you're applying any craft to it, you're still facilitating. And so our wish, our goal is that everyone starts to understand that more deeply amd meetings in general, become more pleasant to attend and more productive. 

Tyrome: Let me turn it back on you just a bit. So if that is the case that you're architecting these experiences, what is the role of the facilitator in these architected experiences to help people find their authentic and authorized voice?

Douglas: Yeah. Well, you know, it starts with purpose and intention. You know, you talked about necessity of purpose. So step one is realizing it's necessary, you know? Because if we don't realize it's necessary, we certainly don't plan in ways to do it. And then I think that then we plan on ways to do it. And, you know, I would be curious about how you approach it. But, you know, the first thing that comes to mind for me is co creation is such a powerful tool. Like if people come together to bring their- they're truly bringing their thoughts to the table, then that's how they can tap into what's authentic for them. 

Tyrome: The requirements that I have whenever I help facilitate...and it's funny because there is a curious blend of experience and professional space that is training, facilitation, consultation and coaching and differentiating all four of those that happened for me at one time. It is not very clean. It is like Bruce Lee and Jeet Kune Do where you take a little bit of this and a little bit of that, a little bit of that and you flow like water and you find people where they are. I think for me that is, I think there's- in fact, I know based on the training I have about group relations, you manage the boundary, time, task and territory, like what are we here to do? And the answer is in the room. And you're helping people discover that. The answer is always in the room. That they've come to this space, the sacred time, space, location to do some work and the work is in here. My task is to help them discover, to co-create. In a process of discovery, they 'go holy...That was real. What the hell just happened? Something happened in that room that I want to get back to.' 

I know I'm always successful in a true facilitation when people go, they'll come to me a year later and they're like 'you know, that thing that we talked about? I went home and I talked about it with my husband. It changed my life with my spouse. It changed my life with my wife. It helped me have a different kind of conversation. I don't, and it would- it could have been about how to build a bridge, you know, but the way that we got to that space of how to build a bridge and asking real questions, that the architecting of the experience helped people really think about themselves and their relationships differently. 

Douglas: I think that's beautiful. You know, whenever we can truly tap into something authentic and something personal when they bring it into their personal lives. Because the reason they do that is because it feels natural, right? Because they are already tapped into that space. So they...honestly, I think that's where were the real work happen.

When we can get people into that feeling of being human, they're going to do amazing work. And, you know, I think there's a really awesome...there's so many tactics and ways to do this. But I don't know if you have some some favorite tools, but one of the tools that I'm a big fan of is authentic relating. I think that we really want people to tap into who they are and to connect with people on that level. Using some of those games and tools can be a nice way to prime them before we get into some more specific work around, here's this problem we're trying to solve. Well, let's get him in the mindset first and then flow into the work. 

Tyrome: It's interesting. When I did a lot more, we're talking...my oldest boy is 17 now. And so 15 years ago, I used to do a lot more stuff when I would have, you know, games and this- and it's powerful and it works. I am always curious about how the people that I work with, because I get a chance to work with senior leaders in organizations about this stuff, would they be willing to play games? And games are truly important, I mean, don't get me wrong. For me in the moment, I do the work with them about the thing they came to do. This may sound harsh, but I punch him right in the face with it in a loving, caring way that is like, what are you really trying to do? Because what I heard was this.

And part of it is my training and this idea of group relations and how we do our work, how I've been trained to do the work over the last twenty five years and blah blah blah, but really getting people to be hyper focused and go to where their affect and their intellect meet. Now, that might be in terms of getting them to write, getting them up on the board, getting them to talk, getting them to move. I will say this, it is not that I don't trust games because I do trust games. For me, it's more important to get up and touch the walls, touch the walls, get up out of your seat. Move your body. Find yourself in space. Where are you in space? Because where you stand and who you stand next to and how close you stand to the task that we're supposed to, and literally how close do you stand to the work that if it's on the wall, how close do you stand to that? It's telling about your relationship to what you're trying to do. So the games for me and the activities like that is about helping people create relationship to one another and relationship to the work. How close do you really, really want to get to doing this hard stuff? 

It's funny. Ten years ago, I did an offsite punch of senior leaders and I said to them...I don't even remember what they were working on, but I do remember that I said to them, 'be prepared to do the hard work of the soft stuff.' Because it's that soft relational work that people dread. 

Douglas: Yeah I mean earlier, you talked about how people struggle with purpose so much and I think it's because it's softer, it's squishier. It's like, comes from the heart, not from the from the muscles, you know. 

Tyrome: Amen. Amen. And now this is a horrible metric, but when we're doing, like, diversity work and if nobody cries, that means they ain't doing the work. That's a horrible metric. 

I've been thinking about that rolling around the back of my head. But I offer it up because if you are intending to do work around race and all of the impactful stuff that go along with race or if you raise it up not so close, but maybe it's even a product that you've spent your life's work on, that you have become the professional. And somebody says, 'I love you. You're a great human being. But that product doesn't exist anymore. It doesn't- we don't need it anymore.' And if people can't connect that, you know, we will say, you know, you are not your job. 

But that is almost impossible. Right. Your limbic system won't disconnect from your neocortical system, your thinking system. And so when you have gotten it down, you know, the whole work on behavioral economics and how people are incredibly tied to what and who they are and how it makes them feel. If you come along, your director comes along and says- the director of your organization says 'nah, we're out of that business' and you don't feel something...you don't know what that means or your business is at risk and you don't feel something, you don't go "well okay, then we'll just figure it out. I'll just move on." I'm not buying it. We can't do it. We're human beings. 

Douglas: Tyrome, I couldn't agree more. You know, I once heard- I can't remember who to attribute the quote to, but it was something along the lines of 'a man will never admit a truth if the truth would jeopardize their livelihood.' So there are things that we're going to hold steadfast even in the face of evidence that the contrary is true. And it's so important to face those things head on. And, you know, and getting teams to a place where they can dive into the work and, you know, it's like where are those unspeakables that we need to embrace?

And so it's been really fun chatting today. I love that we touched on so many things related to facilitation that facilitators can kind of chew on at a almost metal level. This notion of people being citizens and how can we elevate their status so that they feel like they're part of something- of a whole, that they're potentially even creating this thing that's bigger than themselves and how we can be aligned in purpose. Really amazing stuff. I love the work that you're doing. I'm sure our listeners are gonna want to know how to reach out to you, how to connect. Tell us how they can find you. 

Tyrome: It's super simple. I've been so busy over the last five years that even with Go-In, which stands for government transformation through innovation, Go-In. Right. Government innovation. That's my presence. But it's very simple. It's govtinnovation. All one word. govtinnovation, all one word, @gmail.com [govtinnovation@gmail.com]. Very simple. Let's talk.

Douglas: Excellent. Yeah. Shoot him an email, reach out. And Tyrome, It's been great chatting with you. I really appreciate you coming on the show. 

Tyrome: Thank you, Dug. Appreciate you.

Douglas: Thanks for joining me for another episode of Control Room. Don't forget to subscribe to receive updates when new episodes are released. And if you want more, head over to our blog, where I post weekly articles and resources about working better together. Voltagecontrol.com.

"I can readily admit that I have been scared to break the firewall between where I stand socially and politically in my private life, with my friends and family and stuff, and this sort of professional, polished persona that I've had, that I've built my livelihood on. And one of the really significant things that is different for me personally about the latest sort of, like, unprecedented wave of national interest in supporting black lives and being anti-racist is that I, among many others of my colleagues, have really started to knock down those walls and be much more public and much more vocal." 

In these week's episode of the Control the Room podcast, I am so excited to speak with Startup Patterns Founder Sam McAfee. Sam is a Silicon Valley veteran of 20 years and has worked with companies such as Adobe, Teach for America, and PG&E.

Sam and I speak about how a Craigslist posting launched his tech career, how the internet changed the way companies are shaped, and how he is working to be a better ally to people of color in his professional communities. Listen in to find out how he is tearing down the firewall between his personal values and professional persona.

Show Highlights

[2:35] A Craigslist resume & the beginning of Sam's career in tech

[8:14] Startup Patterns: Sam's first book

[12:14] How the internet changed the way companies are shaped

[19:30] Building the next generation of leaders

[24:35] The critical role of purpose in change processes

[31:55] Time & space for reflection

[41:05] Being a good ally & anti-racism policies

Links | Resources

Sam on LinkedIn

Startup Patterns

About the Guest

Sam is the founder of Startup Patterns, a company that helps organizations build and scale new digital products, find product-market fits, improve software development processes, and master teamwork while scaling. He has worked in Silicon Valley for 20 years; some of the companies he has worked with include Adobe, Teach for America, and PG&E. A community activist, he is committed to making the world a better place to live.

Voltage Control is a facilitation agency that helps teams work better together with custom-designed meetings and workshops, both in-person and virtual. Our master facilitators offer trusted guidance and custom coaching to companies who want to transform ineffective meetings, reignite stalled projects, and cut through assumptions. Based in Austin, Voltage Control designs and leads public and private workshops that range from small meetings to large conference-style gatherings. 

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Voltage Control on the Web

Contact Voltage Control

Intro: Welcome to the Control the Room Podcast, a series devoted to the exploration of meeting culture and uncovering cures for the common meeting. Some meetings have tight control, and others are loose. To control the room means achieving outcomes while striking a balance between imposing and removing structure, asserting and distributing power, leaning in and leaning out, all in the service of having a truly magical meeting.

Douglas: Today I have Sam McAfee, founder of Startup Patterns, where he helps companies build and scale digital products, and recently has been helping teams through leadership development. Welcome to the show, Sam. 

Sam: Thanks, Doug. Great to be here. 

Douglas: Absolutely. So I'd like you to start off with a little bit about Sam and how you got to where you are today. 

Sam: Sure. So, yeah, it's a fairly circuitous route, but, basically, I grew up on the East coast of the U.S. and came from a fairly social activist kind of background. One of my family members and friends were kind of in that scene around the Boston area. And I went to school originally in social sciences and had no idea that I would end up in tech. I did not do C.S. as an undergrad. It wasn't really my plan. 

I came out to California after graduating because California seemed like a cool place to do some sort of social-impact work, looking at a lot of the organizing that was going on out here around climate and sort of prison reform and all kinds of other subjects that I was into. And so I came out here and kind of knocked around for a while at the end of the '90s, trying to figure out what I was going to do. And all of my friends that I made socially here, they were all engineers, and they were all here for the dot-com boom that I was sort of only dimly aware of. I was like a starving B.A. graduate trying to find a job with nonprofits and stuff like that. And they were all making three times as much as I was, running code for all the crazy startups that were going on here. They were like, "Hey, Sam, if you just learn a little bit of web programing, you can get a real job, and then it won't be, like, scrimping and scraping." 

So it was really out of economic necessity that I grudgingly picked up a couple of books on web design and hashed together a couple of toy websites over a weekend. And I put my resumé on Craigslist with HTML under "Skills." The next morning, I had 50 emails from recruiters. And I'm not really exaggerating. It was that crazy. 

So I consider it beneficial that I kind of got sucked into the demand for technical labor that was going on at the time. I had no idea what I was doing at first. As I started out, I was a freelance web developer, picking up contract jobs here and there. But I did learn fast, and I learned on the job. And I'm sort of a book learner, so I bought all the books on full-stack web development, such as it was in those days, and very quickly became a pretty proficient contractor. And I managed somehow to survive the dot-com, initial dot-com, crash. 

Gradually, my freelancing work turned into setting up a little agency. So I found that my people skills were good enough that I could talk to clients and customers and get work, be able to translate that layer between the sort of the business and the client and the technology. So there was a comfort level with working with me. So before long, I was bringing in more work than I myself could do. And so I started recruiting some of my friends who were other engineers to work on projects with me. And that just kind of organically grew into an agency that I ran for about 10 years, from 2002 to just the end of 2011, where a lot of changes were taking place.

So during that time, technology scene changed a lot. You know, Cloud and mobile and lots of things kind of grew up during that decade. I also went back to graduate school to fill in my C.S. gaps that I was really insecure, that I didn't really have, like, data structures and algorithms and distributed programing and all that stuff. So I did some grad work to fill in those gaps. And, you know, I also consider myself fortunate that by the time I was putting a team together to work on projects and had to look up on the Internet, "How does one organize a software project?" that was when Agile was really gaining steam. So I didn't unlearn any previous methodologies. Agile was the thing right from the beginning for me that was the go-to methodology that was really becoming more popular for really good reasons. So I've been kind of steeped in the Agile knowledge base and community, really, since, let's say 2003 or 2004, somewhere around there. And so that for me really was the way that I learned to build projects and the way that I learned to write code, and all the way from the technical practices of test-driven development, etc., etc., to the process approaches. 

And so we built really great software in my agency for many, many clients over those years, and one thing that really I noticed a lot was that clients would actually ask me to go out to their team and help them with their process as well. So I ended up sort of farming myself out a little bit as a coach or consultant as well on top of the work that we were doing in-house.

Somewhere along the line, I got exposed pretty early on to the lean startup stuff. I had a buddy who had been reading Steve Blank's book. And this is back when Eric Ries was really just blogging at the time. And that stuff really blew my mind because by that time I'd had enough experiences of building software that nobody really wanted so many times. And granted, we were an agency, so usually it was our client who lost money. We were sort of mercenarial. We still got paid, but it really felt crappy to make stuff that nobody used or wanted. And so I'd had that experience. And so the idea of testing your concept before investing a lot of time in building the code made a lot of sense to me viscerally. So I really got involved with the lean startup kind of community pretty early on, started going to the conferences and meet ups and stuff like that. That stuff really resonated with me. 

Eventually, the recession really caught up with us and just kind of slowed business gradually year over year until about 2011 or so. I was pretty burnt out on running my own agency. And so I went off and had a series of adventures as a senior technical person of one sort or another in a couple of different companies in a row. I ran the engineering team at change.org for a while as they were in a period of growth. I was sort of co-founder in a couple of small startups that went the way that startups typically do. I got a chance to work for what was a much more real and polished consulting agency called Neo. A lot of my colleagues these days are sort of alumni from Neo from those days where I sort of learned a lot about how to be a real consultant, how to be kind of polished in front of executives from bigger brands like Adobe and Toyota and places like that, sort of bigger fish than I had been working with myself in my earlier agency. So the Neo days are really great.

And then, basically, in 2016, I went back out on my own and had been working ever since. Startup Patterns actually is my book that while I was at Neo, a number of the folks there were writing books, and they formed a little book writers kind of club to keep us going. And I heard about the club, and I'd always wanted to write a book. That was sort of my trigger to start writing the book. And so the book was self-published, and it took me about two years to finish, and it was called Startup Patterns. And so when I went out on my own, the book title seemed as good a brand as any to use as my company name. So that's why the book and the company are named the same thing. 

And so I just have been doing my own sort of coaching and consulting since 2016. And whereas I initially started out really focusing on process on coaching teams, either as startups or bigger companies that were doing innovation labs around how to ship digital products quickly, how to do sort of the Agile-delivery stuff, and how to incorporate that successfully into lean startup, build-measure-learn-style customer-development approaches, that gradually shifted about a year and a half ago more and more into leadership stuff, which I think we'll probably end up talking about a bunch more, which is that no matter how good these teams got with coaching, when you're trying to really be successful in building digital products, the barriers that I kept running into as a coach and as a consultant were in the structure of the organization, in particular the leadership, and whether the leadership of the organization, whether that's middle management or the senior executives, really support the kind of transformation and change that is required for an organization to fully embrace digital and fully embrace Agile leadership was constantly the barrier there. And so I just got more and more interested in putting my attention on, why is it so hard for these organizations to change? And so since then, I've pretty much been focused almost exclusively on working directly with technology managers who are trying to effect change in their organizations and how to kind of become better leaders and all that that entails. So that's what brings me here.

Douglas: Excellent. Well, I want to dig in a little bit there on this concept of structure and how that plays a role and kind of stifling change or, like, embracing change, and you mentioned that in passing as you were starting to talk about this new leadership work that you're doing. So I'm curious to hear how structure plays a role specifically and what leaders can do or what they should be thinking about as it relates to the structure.

Sam: Yeah, absolutely. The structure of the organization is really important. So when you look at—just kind of stick with Agile, but I mean sort of digital-product-development methodologies broadly, but let's kind of hang it on Agile for a bit. There's sort of this notion of the cross-functional, self-organized team that's building software that the customer wants and able to kind of ship things reliably with high quality and sort of business success. And so a lot of—in the early days of Agile, we were talking a lot about, well, if you want a cross-functional team, you have to break down silos. So, like, you've got sort of design in one area. You've got product management in another area. You've got the business units that are sort of the stakeholders. You've got the engineering or developers in sort of a different area. And how you sort of get across that. 

And I think what I found is that those silos are very rooted in sort of a legacy of the corporate culture in most organizations. So you can kind of draw a line at where the Internet becoming a big thing, where companies are sort of digitally native, that came up after the boom of the Internet—so the late '90s, early 2000s—tend to be shaped differently than more traditional, older industrial or consumer or financial companies that have been around for a while that are really only trying to go digital now. And I think what we need to understand is that there's sort of like a couple of major legacy—let's just call it baggage—organizational baggage that's been around since the early days of the 20th century, with Taylorism and Ford, that there's sort of this notion of a very top-down command and control style of organization, where the people at the top are making all the decisions, and the people at the bottom are just doing the stuff that they're told. So clearly, you can't really have a self-organizing team that's embracing agility or trying to move toward agility if they're being told what to do all the time. So there's sort of this conflict between a command-and-control culture and the levels of autonomy that are necessary for a team to be self-organized.

And then with the cross-functional stuff, what you end up having is I.T., as we think of it in generic corporate terms, really grew up out of the finance department. Like, we started using computers in corporations because we needed to crunch numbers. So software development emerging necessarily out of an I.T. function, that is really different from a tech company that was sort of natively starting with a cross-functional team as a startup and sort of grows from there. You know, now with startups, you do have to fight against the sort of silos that grow organically. But I think for big companies that have been around for a while, that are struggling through transformation, what is happening is just the whole structure of the company has to change. And that's really scary for people who have been in an organization for a long time, you know, run a particular department, a lot of their identity is wrapped around, "Well, all these people report to me. I'm the V.P. of whatever it is. So my sense of self and my value as a person in this company is based on my authority, that people will do what I say, and that I have this big department of people that report to me." And so we really have to unlearn that stuff if we want to build an organization that's more flexible, that's more resilient, and that can adapt to change in the way that a digital or agile or lean sort of transformation would require.

Douglas: What are some of the signs that you might see that an organization is not autonomous enough, or they might be trying to make some of these changes, but they're just not successful?

Sam: There's an interesting set of patterns that I do see. One in particular springs to mind as you ask the question, which is that even in organizations where—so there's sort of like two things that can happen, I think. One is the organization doesn't really want to change from being top-down command-and-control style but still wants the Agile teams to deliver or wants the product teams to build the right thing. And so you've got a culture where the folks on the ground who are doing the work are used to being order takers. Like, there's a big difference between being a sort of short-order cook and being a chef. Like, being someone who is just sort of following instructions, you get one style of work coming out of that. And folks who are making a lot of decisions on their own and being more collaborative, you get a different result. 

And then, also, I think you have times where the leadership team maybe suddenly becomes enlightened. I don't know if they read a book about autonomy on the airplane ride back from wherever, and they decide, like, "Okay, we have to announce that we're going to do all these new innovative things." And so, you know, I've seen it where the top leadership says, "Okay, everybody, we're taking off the shackles. You're all now free to innovate. Please go forth and innovate." And what you have is an organization full of people who just yesterday were being shouted at and told what to do and are now suddenly being told that they need to be free, independent thinkers. And it's a really abrupt shift in the culture. And so that shifting to an autonomous kind of organization takes time and patience and requires a lot of support and a lot of, what would you call maybe, baby steps. Like, small wins and gradual sort of earning of trust. You can't just sort of like throw everybody free and expect them to know how to operate collaboratively when they're used to being told what to do for years on end. So I think that creates a lot of challenges. 

By the time I get there, it's usually because things are broken or something's on fire. So, like, a lot of time—and I'm sure I'm not the only consultant that feels that way. You know, it's like often it can be a rescue job. But what has often happened is that somebody's made the decision to go sort of go Agile, if you will, and they got some shiny consulting company to come in and give them a diagram of how you do it. They try it for a year or two. It doesn't really work. It doesn't really stick. Things are broken and on fire. And then, I show up and I look around, and I realize that it's really because there's not the shift in values from top to bottom in the culture. There's not a shift to—it's like we want the fruits of autonomy, but we don't necessarily want people to really have say over their work. And that just creates a lot of froth and friction. And then people say like, "Oh, well, we tried Agile, and it didn't work."

Douglas: Let's talk a little bit about the shift of values. And so what does it look like when it's done correctly? And I imagine it's somewhat driven around the fact, the notion, that, well, as a leader, this notion of, well, what is my responsibility as a leader now? What does it mean to even be a leader in this new world? And also, I'm on the hook for making sure that the numbers come out correctly in this quarterly report and that we meet expectations for shareholders, etc. And so how do we balance giving over control with being responsible for outcomes? I'm pretty sure that aligns with what you're talking about around this, like, the shared values not being met. So just kind of curious to understand that more.

Sam: Yeah. I think that's really important. If you look at where the leadership literature is going these days, like if you did a search for top leadership books in the last 10 years or so, there's a really consistent pattern, and that pattern to me is a focus on relinquishing control of all the decisions and focusing instead on the leader acting as a coach to grow other leaders. So, like, the real hallmark of a good leader is that they can build the next generation of leaders below them to take their place, that they're focused on succession, they delegate well, and they help solve problems without directing and without micromanaging, but giving people room to grow. So we can actually connect it directly to say Carol Dweck's Mindsets, this concept of a growth or fixed mindset in an individual extends for sure to the organization and its culture as a whole. 

So I think when it's done well, people are approaching coaching teams and coaching new leaders that are emerging with really a growth mindset and with a focus on having some space to experiment and some safe-to-fail constraints. So you can draw a line around these experiments. You don't want to make them too big that, as you said, you're in danger of missing your numbers. So, like, we're talking primarily about businesses here that have to ship products and make customers happy and increase their market share and post earnings and post profits. 

And so there's always going to be that pressure to perform economically. I think that where the old style of leadership is falling away is that the world has become so complex and even the internal aspects of companies have become so complex that you can't be directive and prescriptive in the way that you can if you're sort of running a more traditional brick-and-mortar, manufacturing organization. In the world of digital in particular—frankly, let's face it. All companies are basically going to have to be digital now—the complexity is massive, and workers are doing work that's much more creative and knowledge work than moving widgets around, and so that kind of work has to be more emergent and collaborative. It's a team sport, especially in design and product development. And so you can't lead that kind of effort with commands. It has to be more like coaching. 

Frankly, I use a lot of parenting metaphors. When you think about what you do with your kids, I definitely had experiences myself with, my son's trying to learn how to tie his shoes or something, and I'm sitting there, having to bite my tongue and not just reach over his shoulder, like, "No, give me that. Here's how you do it." It takes a lot of patience for a leader to sit back and watch the people that report to them struggle. But if they don't struggle, they're not going to learn. So that's sort of where this growth-mindset stuff is really critical.

Douglas: So, let's go back to some of these baby steps. You talked about it being an anti-pattern to just read the book and to come in and say, "We're going to go autonomous. There's a new way of working, and we need to adapt or we're going to fail." So what are some of the things that folks can do to get started, and how do they move more intentionally? And I know you get pulled in a lot to kind of fix the fires, but how can they avoid the fires in the first place? How could they do this more intentionally?

Sam: I think that it requires really acknowledging where you are, right? So it's critical to take stock of the current state, and that's the current state of, like, really, for me, that's typically three big pillars in my head of the technology, the process, and the people, the culture, the sort of communication styles and values, and really understanding what the current state is and having some idea of, if we're in a place that has rigid process and a culture of fear or toxicity or even just kind of like polite, passive aggressivity, which I actually see more often than anything else, and we have technology that's legacy and hard to change and brittle and antiquated, it's really going to be dangerous to just dive in and try to change all of those things wholesale all at once. And so we can have a vision, we have to have a vision, for what we want our organization ultimately look like, or at least what we want it to feel like to work there. And I think that's actually a really important distinction. You know, people focus a lot in tech on sort of the left brain. They're like, let's draw a diagram, and let's have maps and charts and spreadsheets. 

But I think there's a lot to be said about getting in touch with how we want to feel as a team. Like, what does it actually feel like to come into work every day? Are these people we want to work with? Is this work we want to do? Is there meaning and purpose to what we're trying to accomplish? Are we committed to being in this organization, given its stated mission and values? So I think they, like, having some vision of what the future looks like is really critical for any kind of change process. 

And then I think that we have to really only bite off as much as we can chew. Like, this is something, I'm almost saying this to myself because this was a hard lesson for me to learn even as a coach or consultant, where like, look, man, I live in Silicon Valley, and I've been in startups a lot of my career, and I've seen what a small cross-functional team of super smart, fast, flexible people can do in the marketplace. Going from a big old-fashioned organization to that sort of sexy-startup-looking organization is not an overnight thing. And I think I, maybe when I was first doing this work, was really impatient with my clients. I'm sort of like, "Look, I'll tell you how it's done, and I'll show you what good looks like. Let's just go, go, go." And it's been a process for me to learn how to actually be really patient as well, that it's going to be a long road, it's going to be very challenging, and all of those little steps are meaningful along the way. 

So if you have a manager, for example, like an engineering manager who's got a bunch of engineers that report to them, and they're trying to work with those people, just getting that engineering manager to think about and embrace their own fears and hopes and dreams and aspirations and think about what kind of leader do they want to be and just having them learn how to, okay, so you're going to have a one on one with your people. How do you make that one on one structured so that the person who reports to you is getting the most value out of it as possible and growing as an employee? So talking to an engineering manager who's a client of mine for an hour about how to have a good one on one and how to start that process seems like a small thing to do in the context of a huge organization, but it's incredibly meaningful, and it's incredibly impactful. And now I've changed the way that engineering manager is thinking about leading their people forever, you know? It's like they'll never look at a one on one the same way. They'll always have a different, more valuable set of conversation. 

So for me, that's an example of a baby step, because really, like when we're in an organization, organizations are made of people, and people interact through conversations. And so you can think about like, oh, we're going to change the process or we're going to import this new shiny technology or we're going to make org-chart changes. But really what happens is organizations, as they're more fluid and they're more like squishy tribes or villages where the real work happens often one on one or in small groups of people having real conversations with each other and making decisions about what they believe is true and what they believe is not true and what they're willing to commit to in terms of change.

Douglas: Yeah. I once heard this quote that goes along the lines of, if there's more truth in the hallways than there is in meetings, and it kind of comes back to the point you were just making and-

Sam: Oh, for sure.

Douglas: I'm always curious to hear from folks, if you could change one thing about meetings, what would you change?

Sam: Oh, man. Boy, I think that—so with a little context, there is a lot of anti-meeting sentiment in my field, in tech, and I think it's misplaced, and I think it's probably because people just had a lot of bad meetings. I actually really enjoy bringing a small group of people together to have a conversation. That is typically what we might term a meeting. So I think the concept of having group conversations of some sort or another, there's nothing wrong with that. I think that, you know, where it runs all crazy is when, like, people are there that don't even need to be there. It's not clear why we're there. You know, somebody thinks it's a discussion, and someone else thinks it's a one way update of information. 

So I think that it's really hard to pick one thing, but I think that if everyone who came to a meeting decided when they were showing up that they were going to be totally honest and authentic and transparent in their communication at that meeting, like, just, say what is on your mind, if people could be really real in those conversations, it sure would change the tone of a lot of meetings. You know, because I think the opposite is what we're used to, which is everybody's kind of not sure if they should speak up. Maybe they're sort of issuing platitudes. Maybe they're kind of speaking out of one side of their mouth. Like, if all that stuff—that could all go away if everyone's like, "I'm just going to say 100 percent of what I believe 100 percent of the time. And then we'll negotiate the rest," meetings would be a lot more—I mean, some of those conversations would be tougher, but we have better outcomes at the end of the day.

Douglas: That's right. And I think that's very, very possible, when you take a facilitator approach when you think about, like, never starting without a clear purpose, and being really intentional about how you structure the meeting, and you hold space for people to behave those ways. I think it's all possible. And it makes me think about the point you made earlier about in order to identify or prescribe those baby steps that are necessary, we have to take a close look at our current state and just get honest about where we are. I think that is an opportunity for starting the work that needs to be done. So if we're going to be more collaborative, more autonomous, why not create a collaborative group to do this current-state analysis? Let's launch off with these behaviors that we want to model and start doing them organically and build from there, and then the output of that yields more opportunity. It's almost like the kata in a way, right? Like, we're going to take a small incremental step, and then it builds on the next one and builds on the next one. 

Sam: I think piggybacking off of that reminds me that one of the things that's really missing in a lot of organizations is time and space for reflection. Whether it's collective or individual, I think that you can't really be aware of your current state unless you can sort of slow down, put the tools down for a minute, and look around and have some reflection time. And as an individual, I know that certainly the people that I coach, the number one problem that most of them have is that they don't have time or they don't demand time—they don't take enough time. Let's put it that way—in their schedules for reflection. All the leadership books are like, leaders got to take an hour and block off their calendar and sit and stare at a blank piece of paper or go for a walk or whatever just to let the brain catch up with what's been going on. Like, the neuroscience is well established. Reflection is critical. So is rest, you know? 

And so I find that as individuals, we're so rushing through the rat race, that is our economies all the time and under so much pressure to perform and give in and show up, that taking a little reflection for yourself, it feels selfish, it feels irresponsible, and it's completely the opposite. It's critical. You know, that phrase, like, look, when you're on the airplane, they say put your own oxygen mask on first before helping others. Like, that's a good metaphor for thinking about leaders needing to take some time, really anyone, but certainly folks who are in a leadership position, to look back at how we're doing and also for the organization itself, kind of back more specifically to your point, having group or organizational reflection time. I think that if we want to enact change, we need to be able to stop sawing—to take a page from Stephen Covey—and sharpen the saw a little bit. That requires a slow down and reflect. So I think if we were to build that into our company cultures and our values more explicitly, I think it would have a huge impact, a positive impact.

Douglas: Yeah. You know, it definitely resonates with me. We often think a lot about even moments of reflection, debrief, when we're designing meetings and workshops, because that's the moment where people integrate. Like, if we just teach, teach, teach, teach and cram stuff in, well, that's just horrible anyway, but there's no moment for them to really integrate what they've learned. So ideally, there's a lot of practice. They're going to hands on and doing things. But then we want to have them take a step back and go, "What does this mean? How do we make sense of all this?" and then translate it in, into the work at hand. And so I think not only when it's about picking up new skills or coming together on a challenge or some sort of opportunity, it can be everyday work, but taking a chance to reflect. I think for a lot of us, the drive home or the subway ride home after work was that moment where we could do that, and now we don't have that affordance, and so being, especially in this time of the pandemic, let's be intentional about these reflection times and moments. 

Sam: Yeah. That's created a lot of pressure on people, I think. It's interesting to look at the required remote work that we're all doing. I mean, I definitely, like, I have an economics background, like a political-economy background. And so I remember back in the day, a lot of people really being worried about, oh, your work is bleeding over into your personal time. The boss is able to call you at night or send you an email, and we all got our smartphones. And so the line between work and life outside of work is really blurry. And actually, I think that there's a huge risk, despite a lot of probably warranted cheerleading about how cool remote work can be and that people are learning how to be distributed teams, and I think a lot of that can be great, and it's really great for the business to not have as much pressure on maintaining an office space like they used to. But for the individual folks doing the work, do they actually feel like they can turn the machine off and have their own lives? And so I do worry about that blurry line, I guess, where we sort of, the diplomatic way to talk about it in Silicon Valley would be work-life balance. There are other more sharp ways of saying that. 

But I think that's really important that when you think about reflection time, the conversations in the hallways rather than the meetings, or often at conferences, it used to be that you go to all these talks, and it'd be really interesting one-way communication, but the real cool stuff would be at lunch or outside or on walks or in the hallways between sessions. That's people talking to each other and processing what they just learned and figuring out how to integrate it, as you said. And that integration is really critical, and so if we were actually able to build reflection time more intentionally into our workflows, in our process, and our company culture, that would, I think, soak up a lot of that need that people have to chat with each other and process and have that moment of reflection, that sharpening the saw that we all need to do both as individuals and as organizations. 

Douglas: Yeah, I think it's interesting, this notion of not only reserving the personal time, but accounting for and reserving time for the group to do it so that there can be a group synthesis. It reminds me of the Agile retrospective. I think if you really get down to the principles behind it and why we do it, I think there is very much one and the same with what we're talking about right now. I think the problem that I see that's super pervasive and pathological, really, is that people use the retrospective as a way to just address problems that have arisen, and they don't actually do it on a frequent-enough basis to where they are celebrating the wins, integrating the wins, realizing when they slip through by the skin of their teeth and being able to make incremental change. That's one of the things I can easily get on a soapbox about. When I'm working with teams, it's like, man, you got to do this frequently, and it can't be just a tool that you pull out when something goes wrong. 

Sam: Yeah, absolutely. And it can be a forum for a lot of blame and shame, too, like, whether it's explicit or just kind of under the covers, the idea of not taking responsibility ourselves for what we want to do better or want to make better. And I think there's a lot of pressure on a facilitator for sure, retros probably more than anywhere, except maybe like an actual conflict resolution, that facilitator to make sure that people are learning how to listen as much as they're learning how to express. And I think that's a big thing we're also missing in corporate culture. 

I make it a big part of the sort of the curriculum and coaching work that I do in leadership is around empathy and learning how to listen and learning how to listen in a way where it's not just waiting for the other person to finish talking, but actually trying to put yourself in their shoes and hang on their every word and really integrate what's being said, like, really build some empathy there. That's real listening. And so I think the onus is on us, as coaches and consultants and facilitators, to teach people in our organizations how to do that. You know, that's something that doesn't come out of management school, doesn't come out of technical school, barely comes out of social sciences, if at all. 

Douglas: That's a nice segue because I was going to mention we've had discussions over the past few weeks just about the social unrest in America and how we play our part in breaking the silence and not being complicit and trying to be anti-racist as much as possible. And I remember in those discussions, whether at—various books came up, and you make comments about, "Oh, I read this in school." And so it makes so much sense now that you studied social sciences and were really focused on kind of social justice, social-good-type work before you got into tech. And so I just wanted to touch on this because I know that we've both been grappling this and figuring out how to engage in anti-racist policies and just bring that into the work we do, port it, and just be good allies. I'm just wondering what you've found to be successful and what you might have to offer others that are listening and are just looking to add to their toolkit.

Sam: Yeah, yeah, definitely something that's really important to me. I mean, I think that my perspective has really shifted over time but also in these last few weeks. I read a lot. In college, I studied social sciences. I read a lot about social issues like racism and sexism and other isms in school. And I think that when I got into the tech scene in my mid 20s, I was doing organizing and stuff when I first came out to California. I was kind of a rabid activist, if you will. And when I got into the tech scene, I think that a transformation happened where I erected a firewall between my personal and political and social values and my professional persona. And so for many years, and I've been in tech for 20 years, so let's just say for 20 years, I've experimented with ways of getting involved in merging sort of social-impact stuff with tech. Working at change.org was one way. There were a couple of other examples of sort of trying to figure out a way to bridge those two worlds. 

But I really know that I stand on a mountain of privilege, right? So, like, I'm a white guy. I'm hetero. I'm in tech. I work for myself. Like, you could just pile it on, right? And I think that what this latest wave of organizing, you know, and I don't even really necessarily like the term social unrest so much. I think it's sort of maybe accidentally demonizes what is a long tradition of grassroots organizing to change things in this country, whether it's the civil-rights movement or the anti-war movements or the labor movement. I mean, there's a rich tradition of people coming together across many social lines to change things in the conscious. Really, ideally, I mean, really, that's the only way change has really happened for real. 

And so for me, I think that what I've been really grappling with the last several years as there's been increasing polarization in the country, is how do I leverage my privilege and my platform to weigh in on the conversation. And I think that I can readily admit that I have been scared to break the firewall between where I stand socially and politically in my private life, with my friends and family and stuff, and this sort of professional, polished persona that I've had, that I've built my livelihood on. And one of the really significant things that is different for me personally about the latest sort of, like, unprecedented wave of national interest in supporting black lives and being anti-racist is that I, among many others of my colleagues, have really started to knock down those walls and be much more public and much more vocal. 

And so I've been trying to do that, and I've been trying to be fairly deliberative and careful about how I do it. One of the things, I think—I've never seen so many people in my professional circles grappling with, how do we as white people support movement for black lives? You know, how do we be good allies? And people are really trying to learn, really trying to be sensitive, knowing that it's uncomfortable and making a lot of mistakes. And I've been really impressed, to be honest, with how much the folks that I spend my time with are embracing the challenge of fighting against racism as white people who, let's face it, it's our problem. It's our responsibility, and we benefit from it, and to sort of say, "Look, we're not going to do it right. It's going to be hard. Not to guilt, shame, embarrassment, all that stuff. You're going to make mistakes. You're going to put your foot in your mouth. You're going to have—people are going to criticize you no matter what you do." And that's part of the process. That just has to be okay. 

And so I think the big shift for me internally is I'm not scared anymore. I don't really care anymore. This is—I'm seeing now how important it is for people like me to really say something and take a stand. And I feel like I've got to a point, not just professionally, but in my life, sort of personally, morally, spiritually, whatever you want to say, where I'm going to say the right thing, and I don't care what anybody thinks, you know? And I think that really—I'm fired up. I want to try to contribute in whatever way I can. And I am happy to join up with other people that want to have these difficult discussions and figure it out. I'm a little dismayed in some ways that more folks from the tech community, the innovation community, the sort of Agile groups in the world haven't readily come out and been more vocal about these sort of social issues. For folks who really purport to be all about data and continuous improvement and a growth mindset, like, the writing is on the wall. It's right there. Why those folks can choose to be silent, it boggles my mind. 

So I'm pretty committed to being out there and being a lot more noisy in support of anti-racism and in support of Black Lives Matter for sure right now, among a number of other social forces that are changing our world right now. So this is a new time, and I'm really embracing it.

Douglas: Yeah, absolutely. I think to your point, whether it's intentional, people are afraid of those firewalls, or definitely afraid of dismantling them. And they're put there. And I've been talking a lot with folks around this notion of professionalism and what it means to be professional. And I think that we've created this dynamic where it's unsafe to be human. Like, we're not supposed to bring our emotions. We're not supposed bring "politics." And sure, we don't want to get in massive debates over who we're for, etc. But I think caring for our neighbors and making sure that we create a safe environment that's inclusive and supportive of everyone goes beyond politics, and that's just human decency, and I don't see why human decency is unprofessional. And so I'm with you in solidarity on tearing down these firewalls. I've been actively working on it as well. 

And, you know, I'd like to say thanks for joining me today. It's been a real pleasure. I'd like to just wrap with any—well, I want to make sure that the listeners know how to find you, and you mentioned your book. And then if there's anything you want to leave us with, a parting message. So how can they find you, and what do you want to leave them with?

Sam: Sure. So I'm easy to find. Two different ways. You can search for Startup Patterns, startuppatterns.com. We'll come right up in the search results. That's my site. A big LinkedIn user, Sam McAfee. It's very easy to find on LinkedIn. I really encourage people to reach out to me there, connect with me. let's have a conversation. So there's just are the two easiest ways to get connected with me. 

I think that what I would want to leave people with is this is a time that we are in that is unlike anything the world has ever been through before. And it's there for a number of reasons. The pandemic, for sure, is a giant change. It's sort of incomparable to historical events. The sort of associated economic turmoil that comes with it. And now this major social movement that was a long time in the making, but it's really broken the surface. And I think people are thinking and rethinking how they feel about what we want, what kind of world we want to have in ways that they've never been doing before. And I think for me, the personal is political and the political is personal. So there's a lot of internal and individual transformation work that goes along with changing the world. And I just don't want people to forget that. It's not all about going out there. It's not all about the public conversations, and going and being at the rallies and writing and reading and posting and discussing are really important. There's also a lot of internal grappling that we all need to do and just know that you're not the only one. And a lot of us are going through this major reckoning with things that we thought we believed or we thought we valued and really thinking about transforming ourselves from the inside. And so that's a lot of what I focus on, the folks that I work with and friends of mine, around, how do we support each other through that very challenging but necessary personal transformation so that we can really build a world that we all really want to live in?

Douglas: Awesome. Thank you for being on the show, Sam. It's been a great opportunity to talk with you. And I really enjoy the conversation.

Sam: Thanks. Me, too. This has been really great. Thanks for having me. 

Outro: Thanks for joining me for another episode of Control the Room. Don't forget to subscribe to receive updates when new episodes are released. If you want more, head over to our blog, where I post weekly articles and resources about working better together, voltagecontrol.com.

"We work with the agencies who are culture driven, meaning that, yes, we can make more money, but we'd rather make a little less money and put culture first, because we understand that it's a marathon, right? Like, we understand that if our employees are happy, it's going to make our situation a lot better." Kaleem Clarkson

This week on the Control the Room Podcast, I'm excited to speak with Kaleem Clarkson, COO and Co-founder of Blend Me, Inc., a consulting firm that cultivates remote employee experiences from onboarding through off-boarding. He has a particular interest in culture-driven organizations.

Kaleem is also the COO of RemotelyOne, a members-only community on a mission to end remote work isolation by connecting and building relationships between location-independent professionals.

Kaleem and I speak about the different types of remote work, why some companies are struggling to transition to remote work, and why it's so important for a job posting to accurately represent your organization's culture. Listen in to find out how Kaleem's experience as a member of a college metal band led to his career as an employee experience expert.

Show Highlights

[2:43] Blind Melon, Slick Rick, & Warped Tour

[13:43] The Teleworks Big Three

[20:16] The commonality between organizations struggling to work remotely

[28:56] Company culture clubs

[34:48] Handling employee anxieties during COVID-19 layoffs

Links | Resources

Blend Me, Inc.

RemotelyOne

Kaleem on LinkedIn

About the Guest

Kaleem Clarkson is an employee experience expert and remote work advocate helping organizations build intentional employee lifecycles that begin at initial job postings and end after off-boarding. He is the COO and Co-founder of Blend Me, Inc. a remote employee experience consultancy. He is also the COO of RemotelyOne, a members-only community for location-independent professionals.

Voltage Control is a facilitation agency that helps teams work better together with custom-designed meetings and workshops, both in-person and virtual. Our master facilitators offer trusted guidance and custom coaching to companies who want to transform ineffective meetings, reignite stalled projects, and cut through assumptions. Based in Austin, Voltage Control designs and leads public and private workshops that range from small meetings to large conference-style gatherings. 

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Spotify

Android

Stitcher

Voltage Control on the Web

Contact Voltage Control

Intro: Welcome to the Control the Room Podcast, a series devoted to the exploration of meeting culture and uncovering cures for the common meeting. Some meetings have tight control, and others are loose. To control the room means achieving outcomes while striking a balance between imposing and removing structure, asserting and distributing power, leaning in and leaning out, all in the service of having a truly magical meeting.

Douglas: Today I'm with Kaleem Clarkson, co-founder and chief operating officer of Blend Me, Inc. He is a remote-employee-experience professional, and developing RemotelyOne, a community for location-independent professionals. Welcome to the show, Kaleem.

Kaleem: Douglas, thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I hear this crowd applause in the background. Let's get that in post-production. I love it.

Douglas: Awesome. So, Kaleem, I'm really curious to hear how an employee-experience professional gets their start. How do you find your way on this path? 

Kaleem: That's a good question. I probably should have this ready by now. But I guess I'll start my origin story. I guess this is my origin story. So born and raised in Bangor, Maine. I'm going way back. Bangor, Maine, represent. I always love to throw it out. My home state, I love it. But I ended up going to college in Massachusetts. Got a chance to play at Western State University. Got a chance to play some college football there. And during that time, we all had a very good time. Let's put it that way. I enjoy having beverages with people, making sure that everyone else is having a good time, and we ended up throwing a good amount of gatherings, should you say, in college. And started getting into a metal band, believe it or not. Just got into a metal band and started rocking out. Love the stage. Love that whole feel to it. And that led me to starting a nonprofit organization called Concerts for Charity, which I think we started in '99. And we started putting on different concerts with different charities across New England. We got our 513(c) status and started donating to different charities, and we got to work with a lot of cool bands in different areas—you know, a lot of jam bands, a lot of hard-rock bands. We worked with—jeez, I'm trying to think of some bands that we booked in the past. I think we booked Blind Melon on their comeback tour, which was pretty cool. Chk, Chk, Chk out in Sacramento, I remember back in the day. I think we booked Slick Rick, a rapper. If you don't know, some of the old-school folks.

Douglas: Colleague of Doug E. Fresh, if I'm not mistaken. 

Kaleem: Yeah. Yeah. You know, what's funny is we went and picked him up at the airport or whatever, and he gets in the car, and total British accent. You know? So, you don't think about that, like, dude's been living in England all these years. And gets in, and he's like, "Hello." Horrible British accent, by the way. That's horrible. 

But anyway, yeah. So I got a chance doing that, and that was really kind of my first experience with dealing with virtual volunteers. VolunteerMatch at the time, we ended up connecting with the Warped Tour, and were able to register people to vote through a group called HeadCount as well. Anyway, it was great. It was a cool experience. We got to do a documentary that featured Trey Anastasio from Phish, Bob Weir from the Grateful Dead, and Bela Fleck and the Flecktones—really big artists in the jam-band scene. And we got to debut it at HBO. So it was cool. I was probably only, what, 21 years old, 22 years old? I really got my first taste of putting on events and just kind of sitting back and watching everybody having a good time. And I think that's the common theme, right? Everyone was just having a good time. Everyone has that cup, that Red Solo Cup, and that really cheap beer. But everyone's having a good time, generally. 

And yeah, so I kind of move on. Moved to Atlanta, my partner and I, and get a job at Kennesaw State University at Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. And that's like a faculty-development center. They basically teach faculty how to teach. I don't know if you knew that, you know, a lot of people may not know this, but college professors, they graduate with a PhD, and they put right in the classroom, so they don't go through any teaching training or anything like that, a lot of them. So, yeah, yeah, it was cool. I got to put on a lot of international conferences there. Again, I'm putting on parties again, right, except in a different setting. That was the kind of interesting, or educational piece to me. I didn't realize faculty also enjoy having a good time, and they do. 

So, yeah, all these professional conferences, got a chance to put some of those on, and really kind of just didn't even realize that—I was there for 10 or 12 years. And I would have to say in 2012, I believe, during my work at Kennesaw, I got heavily involved with the Drupal community, and Drupal's an open-source website-application tool, kind of like WordPress, build websites with it. So kind of got involved with that community. And again, that was another experience of being with like-minded people. It was outside of my previous experience of concerts and the entertainment industry, and then getting in the higher ed around faculty in the higher ed industry. Well, now I'm around other computer digital marketers and digital professionals, you know, developers. And yeah, I got heavily involved with Drupal and started building websites, and I kind of became a Drupal developer. And last year, or probably a year and a half ago, yeah, a year, I left higher ed and decided to get involved with a company called Oomph as a UX engineer and started doing some front-end development work.

But the cool thing about Drupal and open source is, again, the networks of people that you meet. And during that time, it was 2012, that I was at a conference in Denver, DrupalCon Denver, and I heard a talk by, his name is Matt Westgate from a company called Lullabot. They're a big development firm. I think they did the Grammy's website and some other big ones. But anyway, yeah, I went to that talk, and he was talking about how to run a virtual organization. And he talked about why they weren't using the word remote and why they were using the word distributed and how those words, what those words actually could mean to people. And I recall him saying remote felt like you were distant from something.

Douglas: Mm-hmm.

Kaleem: You were away from a group of people. So it was fascinating. Like, at that time, 2012, it seems like 100 years ago, but there weren't very many people talking about how to work remotely. So I came home, and my partner, she had graduated two years before that, in 2010, with her master's degree from Yukon in organizational development. And she actually wrote her master's paper thesis on virtual volunteerism, because my charity had hooked up with the Warped Tour, and we had virtual volunteers all over the country. So I came home from that, and I was talking with Jen, and I said, "I think we found something. I think we should do our own thing," and she was all about it. 

She was looking for strategic HR jobs, and there weren't very many. People love those jobs, by the way. I'll use VP of people and CHRO of people; they don't really leave those jobs, because those jobs, they're great. Strategic HR's obviously a much bigger thing now. So we just decided to create Blend Me, Inc. I kind of took care of the marketing, and then she would take care of the engagement, and that's how we kind of came up with the name. 

So she worked for a while at a company that was all distributed. And, you know, we kind of did some consulting on the side with some diversity inclusion. And at the end of the day, you realize all of your experiences are kind of what, together, are who you are, and I was very fortunate in that I had been at companies for—I was at Kennesaw for a very long time, 11 years, and it was because we had a great time. And now, if I'm looking back, you asked me the origin question of how you become an employee-experience professional, you just look back and think about all of the situations and the moments you had that were special with a special group where you accomplished big goals. We accomplished a lot of great things there, and a lot of it had to do with the fact that we were all having a really, really good time. 

So this year, with COVID, I decided that it's time to go full time, that we no longer had that obstacle of proving to people that remote work, you can be productive. That has always been an obstacle. And honestly, what we decided from day one, 2012, when we're writing our mission statement, we said we did not want to work with agencies that wanted us to prove that remote work was the right answer. We didn't want to get into that type of work, because trying to prove to somebody that, no, you could do this, it's just not really in our—we want to help people that have already kind of gone over that hump or already believe that it can be successful, because if there's not a belief from the very top all the way through the organization, it doesn't come through as authentic. 

So what's interesting is for all these years, there's been a very small market. But I firmly believe, and I think we can all agree, that from March of 2020 on, I don't think any manager—well, in certain industries, I shouldn't say that—but I'm going to say in 90 percent of jobs today that we have behind a desk or in an office, it's going to be very difficult for managers to say that you're not productive. 

So, yeah, that's the whole origin story. I think I got it in, like, eight minutes. I got to work on cutting it down a little bit. But, yeah, that's how we kind of came to this point.

Douglas: Yeah. And I really want to dig in on the definition of remote versus distributed. And, you know, even virtual is kind of mixed in there as well. I ran into this when I was first venturing out of my own and kind of exploring this kind of concept of fractional CTO. And at first I was calling myself a virtual CTO, and someone asked me—it was a junior developer—they said, "So does that mean it's all in the cloud?" And so I thought maybe this word virtual is not a good fit here. 

That story or that notion of misinterpretation of the word virtual is I know exactly what you're getting at around remote versus distributed. And I think that a lot of those notions really held us back. But now that everyone's been thrust into this experience where they've been forced to grapple with it, to wrap their hands around it, they're starting to understand that there are some benefits, and things maybe aren't as bad as they might imagine.

Kaleem: Absolutely. And you know what really the difficulty with our industry—and when I say "our," I just mean remote work or telework industry—is that we don't have an association now. I know Laurel Farrer has just created the Remote Work Association, and I give her kudos to that. And I believe—what's her name from FlexJobs?—Sara—can't remember her name, but she started FlexJobs. They created the one-million-person march campaign. There's been different, like, spin-off campaigns.

But one thing that I've learned from higher ed is when you have the National Society for Statistics, Mathematics and Statistics, you know, that's an organization that spits out all the knowledge. When you have SHRM—Society for Human Resource Management—or you have these major-field associations, there is research. There's guidance. There are definitions. There are thought leaders. 

And for me and for us when we were trying to talk to clients about the different types of "remote" work, we just always got stuck. Me, having that thought of, well, let's find the history, and realizing that, oh, okay, well, outside of the U.S., a lot of countries use the term telework. The government agencies use the word telework. You know, there's telework guidance guidelines for the government—well, before, but I'm pretty sure that they still exist somewhere. So then we were struggling with that. 

So for us, we just figured, okay, we need to come up with our own definitions for when we're working with clients. And we wanted it to show homage to Jack Nilles for coming up with the word telework in 1973. It's kind of a little outdated definition, but we just kind of thought, like, okay, all of these different things of telework, and when we're thinking about the different types, we realized that a lot of the terms are related to a central workplace. So for us, what we decided to do is come up with our own definitions. 

Here we go. We call them teleworks big three, right? So we kind of go with, all of it's telework work, but a distributed company doesn't have a centralized workplace. So when we're talking with our clients, we're like, "Oh, yeah. We're a remote company. We don't have an office." We'll say, "Okay, well, for our purposes, when we're in our meetings and when we're talking about the programs that we have, we're going to refer to your agency as a distributed company because you don't have a centralized workplace." So employees, they work from wherever they're the most productive and the most comfortable. So that's distributed. 

Then we came to the common word of remote. And what drove us to this was back to that 2012 talk of the reason why they don't use the word remote was that it felt like you were away from the centralized workplace. Well, Lullabot was 100 percent distributed. They didn't have a central workplace. But remote employees are away from a centralized workplace. So to me and to us, when we're talking to—not to me, but internally speaking—remote employees are people who work away from the office. So you have a centralized office, there are people that are going into the office every day, but you also have some remote employees. So that's how we kind of label that. 

And then our last one is kind of like the telecommuter, telecommute. You know, telecommute employees share their time between a central workplace and working wherever they feel comfortable. 

So to us, that's kind of how we've broken it down. I'd be awesome if everybody out there in the whole remote workspace would say, "Hey, this is great. Let's all agree to this." As far as posting social media, remote work is very popular, the term remote work. And we're kind of still in that space as well, so we understand. But when we're internal, I kind of feel like there are definitely differences.

Another word that we've seen before to replace kind of remote employee is maybe hybrid. You know, we've heard people talk about a hybrid setup and a hybrid setup means half the people are in a central workplace and half the people are not. 

So I do feel like it's really important. I wish, I hope somebody steps up and maybe the Remote Work Association will be that governing body for all of us, where we can all post our research too and be a place. For right now, I guess we'll use the term remote work when we're talking to the rest of the world and just try to clarify the differences between the different types, because there's a major difference in communication facilitation and how you're going to manage your team based on the types of telework that you're implementing.

Douglas: Absolutely. And I would imagine that the tactics would be quite different and maybe even the programs which you might use to address the concerns or the needs. 

So when you think about these three, this taxonomy, when you're working with clients, is there one category that you find is most popular?

Kaleem: Yeah. There's no doubt that what we call remote or "hybrid" is the most popular, especially like today—you know, so it's kind of a difficult question because it's like, well, are you talking about before or after? So before; let's just talk about before. Before, and I'm saying just so the world knows I'm talking about before COVID-19, okay? Before COVID-19, I would say there were definitely more hybrid companies or remote companies where they had people working in a central workplace and some people working remotely. Telecommuter, it's kind of, you know, I would say a lot of agencies allow their people to work from home a couple of times. So I would say definitely between telecommuting agencies that lets you work from home a couple of times a week and the hybrids were by far the most popular.

Douglas: And what do you think folks are learning as they're shifting a bit, as far as their ability to set the frequency at which people were remote? They went from being a part-time, somewhat sometimes kind of thing to being a full-time thing. And I'm sure you've seen them kind of struggle from—because I would imagine some of the practices and approaches they were using, let's say the weaknesses maybe started to show more once they started to lean more heavily into it. So I'm curious what you noticed. As folks have been forced to be more remote, what have they noticed that broke down? What was no longer working for them? And I'm interested from a pattern standpoint. Like, what's been consistent across most of your conversations? What are you hearing that's like a...kind of a very common issue that's been breaking down for folks as they have become more remote?

Kaleem: There's no doubt it's been communication. We kind of used to brand ourselves as an internal-marketing agency, and we still do a lot of internal marketing. But there's no doubt that the communication has been one of the biggest breakdowns, because you weren't set up to do this. One of the things that we talk about when you're designing your employee experience is you have to look at it from the day they look at your job ad to the day that they are departing. And if you don't have a plan—and you know this with meetings—if you don't have an agenda, right, or you don't have a set of goals that are intentional, then your product's not going to most likely be as good. And then that goes for the same thing with internal communication and doing remote work. 

The ones who are struggling are the ones who did not have good internal-marketing practices in place. The organizations who are struggling are the ones who don't trust their employees. The ones who are really having a tough time are the ones who did not take on the responsibility of providing enough resources, enough training, enough documentation to allow you to be distributed now. 

So it's really interesting to see the companies who haven't even missed a beat. A lot of the Drupal companies in the web-development space, I'm learning a lot of this, the culture and the practice and stuff, from some of these companies. They're going on—you know that talk that I'm telling you about is 2012. Another company, Four Kitchens, I mean, they're another Drupal company. They've been distributed now for, jeez, probably eight years. And the company I work for, they've had distributed people. 

So the organizations who are not having a challenge at all are the ones who are already prepared to be remote already. So, you know, just to kind of re-emphasize, the ones who did not have their internal-communications strategy set up are the ones who are struggling the most. There's no doubt. 

Douglas: Yeah. And so what are the hallmarks of a good internal-marketing program? How do we bolster those communication plans?

Kaleem: Whew, yeah, that's a deep one. That's a deep one. So just not just internal marketing. I probably shouldn't say the ones who didn't have the internal-marketing plan, but more along the lines of, you didn't have your whole employee experience planned out, because you can have the best internal marketing set up, but if you haven't explained how your culture works or what your culture's like, a remote employee can't feel that. So I guess I should say, you know, yes, internal marketing is critical because it's part of communication. That's a huge piece. But in the whole employee experience, there are a lot of steps. 

And I would say Gallup, for all you researchers out there, Gallup, we've been quoting Gallup a long time for all of the awesome research they've done on remote work: how many people work remotely? They're one of the best that have been producing it. They kind of came up with this great diagram of what the employee experience is like. I'll just kind of go through those different spaces, because internal marketing kind of fits kind of within these things, right?

So their first thing that they talk about is attract. How is your job description written? Does it reflect the type of people that work at your agency? And are you attracting the type of people that you want to be at your agency? So what's your culture statement look like? Do you have a page that talks about your culture? Do you meet every single day? Is it more of a Netflix—work-90-hours-a-week-type culture, or are you more like work whenever you feel comfortable? So that's important that your website's set up right. 

Then, you got to hire. Is your hiring practice matching what you've already talked about? Are you interviewing with multiple people on the teams? Are you meeting those people? Do you have a chance to talk to the culture club or people outside of your team instead of just your team? 

Then, you have to onboard the people. So now you're only at step three. Onboarding and onboarding alone are very, very thorough. Onboarding program can be up to 18 months. You're talking about, okay, you'll get 30-, 60-, 90-day reviews, and you have to kind of establish what your goals kind of were. And so onboarding can be long.

Then, you have engagement. You got to make sure your employee's engaged. So you have engagement pieces. 

Then, you have to set up and go to performance. You got to make sure your performance evaluations are set up correctly. Make sure that everybody understands what is expected of you to be successful at that organization.

And then you have to develop them, right? And then they depart at some point. 

So this huge step of, like, seven steps of the whole employee experience, what we've realized from remote work is that you have to have trust. Trust is even more critical. Trust is even more critical because, you know, are you an agency that is going to try to have a piece of software that takes snapshots of your individuals every 90 seconds? Or are you a results-only-type agency that cares more about the results and understands that, hey, with school the way it is in some places, people may not be able to work all day. You know, people may have to work at a different time. So trust is critical. 

And then, we kind of talked about responsibility earlier. You have to have this—you know, to work remotely, there's a sense of responsibility both on the employee and on the employer. It's a very two-way street. 

So, like, this whole, whole thing is kind of what is the pillar of the remote-employee experience, kind of something that we're kind of labeling as "tree", trust and responsibility. In order for you to get that set up, you just have to start at the beginning, and you have to be intentional of what it is that you're trying to accomplish in each step. 

So, I know I didn't answer your question specifically about, like, what are some of the pillars in establishing a good internal-marketing strategy? But, you know, I just kind of wanted to really emphasize that you need to think about this whole thing and not just the internal-marketing side. You have to think about this whole thing, because now we don't have those office places that people can talk to and interact with. You know, now people are distributed behind a computer. So you really do have to think about the whole spectrum. 

Douglas: Yeah, that makes sense. What is that journey the employees taking, and how can you meet them at various moments in that journey with intention?

Kaleem: Yeah. Yeah. And we're just seeing it right now. The groups who really, really, really care about their employees, that are—what we like to say is we like to work with agencies who are culture driven. And to us, what that means is, listen, we all want to make money. I kind of feel like people trip sometimes when you talk about we care about people. Even nonprofits, people—look, nonprofits make money, people, just so you know this. And I used to tell people about this all the time. A nonprofit, a 513(c) is an IRS designation. All that means is that entity does not have shareholders. Charities make profits. Your business has to make profits to be sustainable. So with all of that said, we work with the agencies who are culture driven, meaning that, yes, we can make more money, but we'd rather maybe only make a little less money and put culture first, because we understand that it's a marathon, right? Like, we understand that if our employees are happy, it's going to just make our situation a lot better. So I think one thing I like to talk about is culture-driven agencies.

Douglas: Yeah, I like that, this notion that that's a priority and a focus for the leadership. 

So I want to talk a little bit about some tactics. And something that we talked about, or that I noticed, in some of our preshow exchange was around the use of Google Docs and how you can, as a remote tool, use that to focus the team into a common task. So I'm just really curious around what are some things that people can go do today, whether it's, like, use Google Docs in this fashion, if you want to elaborate on that, or it could be any other tactic or approach, but what's something that they can just go literally try out and improve their employee experience? 

Kaleem: All right. That's cool. I like that. I like that. So I'm just going to kind of go through each one of them. I think that kind of will make a little bit more sense in my brain. 

So the first thing that you can do to attract the type of employees that you want, I learned this, actually, with Oomph, inc. is they created a culture club, which I thought was pretty neat. Get some of your team together, make it voluntary, and say, "Hey, you know what. We want to kind of rewrite what our culture statement is like to better fit who we are today. And we want to kind of better illustrate what it's like to be a part of this team." I like to use team instead of family. Sometimes families…you know. So, yeah, "What is it like to be a part of this team?" so that you're attracting the right people. 

The other thing, too, is to kind of attract some of those people that you're looking at, get outside of your normal bubble and market yourself, but—we love to say, and now I'm going to kind of talk about engaged—look for people that are going to add to your culture instead of culture fit. So we like to use the word culture ad versus culture fit. Culture's great, but we all talk about why is culture great aside from the obvious reasons from a personal and emotional level. 

Back to business, you want as many different people on your team so that you have different perspectives. Like, if you want to just talk about "Straight cash, homey," T.O. quote, it's more about having people, more variety of people, on your team so that you have different perspectives. You know, just think of Corn Pops. If Corn Pops would've had maybe more people on their marketing team, they wouldn't have sent out that Corn Pops box years ago, where the only brown Corn Pops person as the janitor. You know what I'm saying? Like, that's a huge gaffe, right? 

So that's attract. So that's one thing that you could do. Maybe get a culture club together, try to rewrite your culture statement.

With hiring, I would say a good one is—oh, yeah. This is a simple one. This is more probably along the lines of in your wheelhouse of facilitation—do not, by all means, do an interview with—and I'm sorry to say this, Owl Labs, because you have an awesome product, but it feels awkward—don't do an interview with your team at a conference table and the employee remote. I understand—I think Owl Labs cameras are the best. Now I can't get it out of my head. It's an unbelievable product, in my opinion. You know, it kind of jumps around to the person that's speaking, and the camera shows the whole room, and it kind of goes back and forth. It's super cool. Like, I would suggest it for any agency that has multiple board rooms in different places that are meeting and talking. But when you have an interviewee, their first impression, and they're trying to talk with you and you're at a conference-room table with eight of your colleagues side by side, there is already an us-versus-them experience. So it's already a "I'm here, and you're there." So my suggestion is just get everybody on Zoom or whatever video system you're using. Equality, it's about the same. So put everyone on the same call, the same platform, the same camera. Everywhere the same. 

Douglas: Yeah. You know, I've said that for years. Like, if we're facilitating and someone's remote, everyone should be remote because we want to level the playing field. Otherwise, it's going to be hard to empathize if we're not all experiencing what everyone else is or what those few individuals are experiencing. And it reminds me of all-hands meetings years and years ago, where people would dial into it. And then I thought to myself, what is it like to actually dial into one of these things? So I dialed into one, and it was—I mean, I couldn't hear anything. It was [muffled]. And then you'd hear people talking like that, and you'd think, oh, I don't know. I don't even know what anyone's saying. And maybe every now and then you could make out a few things the CEO said but definitely didn't hear any questions or any dialogue. And it's, like, really not great. And so I love that point of, like, let's level the playing field. 

Kaleem: Yeah. Yeah. 

So then for onboarding, so you're kind of talking about Google Docs and stuff. But for onboarding, simple solution, like, you got to have a place where someone's going to learn about the organization. Believe it or not, a lot of companies don't have a moment to hear the origin story. Like, we talked about my origin story earlier. And to a lot of people, they may fast forward, but, like, hey, I love to rep Bangor. You know, there's an emotion to why a business got started. You know what I mean? There's something outside. There's a story. And if people don't know that story,  then they may not understand what it is, you know, what are the values that are driving the organization? 

So to me, I know onboarding is not the initial, it's not the first interaction with the agency. It's not even where first opinions happen, because it's in the third step. We're in the third step, right? I mean, we understand that your first impression is definitely the job description. I mean, when people look at the jobs, their first impression is the job description, and then they go on your website. But when you're onboarding, this is kind of like the first time that employees get to interact or participate. This is the first time that the individual's participating. So this is a really, really, really crucial moment to let them know what that origin story is and let them know what values are driving your organization. 

So one of my first recommendations is just record a video of the founder. I mean, it doesn't even have to be crazy. Just record a video of when the founder got the idea for the business and why the founder started it, and then maybe a little bit about what drives the company. Because right now, COVID-19, if you have to let go of 20 people, or maybe you have a staff of 100 and you got to let go 20 or 30 people, those other people that are there, they go through all sorts of emotions, never mind the people that you let go. But the people that are staying there are going through some stuff. They lost some friends that are no longer employed. There's a little bit of uncertainty about the future. If all your employees know what drives you even during uncertain times, a lot of these anxieties that make people nervous and get people looking for other options will be erased. 

So onboarding is so critical, and I can't give away all my secrets. 

Douglas: Sure, sure.

Kaleem: So I would say the video is something simple. If you don't have a quick little video that somebody can watch or even, like, a couple paragraphs, how you got started and why you got started and then what drives you. And I know people use the word values all the time. I'm trying to use different words than mission and vision and all that stuff. But what drives your company?

Douglas: Yeah. And a couple things I would add there. It's like so many companies talk about values, and even in the job description, they'll describe things that are aspirational and not necessarily—they're not really conveying the fact that we are that culture that's working 60, 80 hours a week. And if you plan to retain people and you're doing that, you should be pretty honest about it up front, right?—

Kaleem: Right. Yes, be honest.

Douglas: —rather than tricking people into coming in. And then the same thing with values, right? If they're just some words that we adopted because they sound like stuff that, you know, you put on values—

Kaleem: Hardworking, go-getter. I mean, like, what is that?

Douglas: Yeah. And integrity. 

Kaleem: Yeah. Like, what is that? What is that? 

Douglas: So if you can make them authentic, then I think people are going to resonate with those. And if they're shared values that they hold, then it can get people really excited. So I think that's really great. 

Kaleem: Yeah, yeah.

Douglas: And one thing that I saw a company do here in Austin I've always been a fan of is they created a scavenger hunt, and, essentially, new employees were given this scavenger hunt. And the cool thing about the scavenger hunt was that it included different aspects of the company's history. The way that they got to the answers or found these things, they would have to go talk to other employees in other departments. And so they got—

Kaleem: Nice.

Douglas: —to know so much about the way the company worked, the way the company—

Kaleem: I love this.

Douglas: —had evolved over time, and they made friends and connected. And it was very participatory. So I love it because it's like a facilitator's dream to do those kinds of things. And so if more companies could institute these types of more participatory onboarding practices, I think you'd start to get into what we talk about as facilitator leadership.

Kaleem: I love that idea. You're definitely going to have to send me some—maybe you can remember the company and send me some stuff on that. I think that's a great, great idea. 

So then, yeah. So then you have engagement. And there's a million different ideas for engagement. One thing that I love for remote work that—I don't know, maybe this is more in performance—so engagement, you've got to keep your remote workers engaged. So do you host an annual retreat? Do you host a quarterly retreat? You know, how many—do you have—I don't want to say happy hour, but that's no good. The link to—Zoom happy hours have been pretty tiring of late. 

Oh, on engaged, this is my tip for engaged. Something very simple. Ask your employees how they're feeling. Like, literally, you could not imagine how many companies just don't send a very simple employee engagement survey out to their employees. Like, all of us consultants in H.R. are like, "Yo, stop talking, Kaleem." But the fact that you just don't do that, it's so easy. Just write, like…

And the other thing that I would suggest is if you're going to use a survey, if you're going to have a survey, you got to have a plan of what you're going to do with the data. So come up with a very simple survey. And I would say ask that question, ask that survey, the exact same time next year so that you can have some sort of benchmarks. You know, doing a survey for no reason, you need to be able to have some data. And  I actually suggest surveying people frequently. There's a lot of great survey software out there. Like, I don't know. Was it Officevibe? Culture Amp? All of these softwares that send random questions to employees. You may not have that software, the budget for that, but you can come up with a very easy SurveyMonkey or Google Forms with four or five questions and ask your employees every quarter. And they could be the same questions. Maybe you'll find out that in the fall this one question's being answered, and they're lower in this for some reason. So for engagement, that would be my one tip is you got to ask your employees how they're feeling.

Douglas: Awesome. We've definitely covered the gamut, from starting off with a good impression on job descriptions; making sure we're thinking about that human connection in the remote landscape; the taxonomy—making sure we think about what bucket we're in, what is our style of remote work, and how can our approaches and tactics be tuned to be appropriate for our style—all the way through to making sure that we are engaging folks and even understanding how they're feeling, especially in this time of a global pandemic that can be damaging morales and stuff. So, wow, covered a ton, and it's been a blast thinking about all this stuff, Kaleem. And I know that the listeners are probably curious how they can connect with you, learn more, maybe end with a little bit around how they can find you.

Kaleem: Yeah, sure. You can find me personally anywhere: kaleemclarkson. So I'm @kaleemclarkson on Twitter, LinkedIn. And you can find our company at blendmeinc.com. And also Remotely One. If you are a remote location, independent professional, and you're feeling the pains of isolation and loneliness and you want to still kind of build your network, come join Remotely One. We're a members-only community for location and independent professionals. So you can find us at remotelyone.com or @remotelyone. 

And yeah, I guess if there was something that I wanted to kind of sign off on, I guess that would be, let's not all go back—if there was a piece of advice that I could give to organizations out there, don't go back to the way it was before COVID-19 "just because." So let me repeat that. Don't go back to business before COVID-19, don't go back "just because." And what I mean by that is take this time as an opportunity to further develop your organization to be prepared for other disaster contingencies. They're going to happen. If you're up in New England, you deal with the snow. Midwest, you deal the snow. I mean, there are disasters all the time. Hurricanes. Remote work, as you all have noticed, can help you make it through those times. So take this time to figure out how you can be better when you go back, when we go back, to the "new normal," and maybe think about how you can reuse your space or reuse some of the things that you used to do before. So let's just not go back to the way it was before COVID-19.

Douglas: Kaleem, it's been a pleasure having you on the show. Thanks for joining.

Kaleem: I appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me on. Come back anytime.

Outro: Thanks for joining me for another episode of Control the Room. Don't forget to subscribe to receive updates when new episodes are released. If you want more, head over to our blog, where I post weekly articles and resources about working better together, voltagecontrol.com.

"In today's world, compassion and kindness in the business environment is the most valuable thing that you can bring to your business or any working session." - Eli Wood

In this podcast episode, Douglas Ferguson and Eli Wood discuss the importance of facilitation in working with interdisciplinary teams and building successful products and business offerings. They emphasize that facilitation is not limited to design sprints but can be applied to any situation where collaboration and decision-making are needed. They also highlight the role of facilitation in product management, as product managers need to navigate diverse requirements and agendas. The conversation also touches on the power of facilitation skills for individuals at all levels and the importance of building relationships and trust. Eli shares a success story where facilitation skills helped overcome challenges in a large-scale project.

"A lot of times, people will think that they're experimenting because they're being scrappy and moving fast, but they're not learning as they go. The fundamental benefit comes when you stop and reflect and learn and improve." Kai Haley

This week on the Control the Room Podcast, I'm excited to speak with Kai Haley. In addition to being a founder and leader of their Sprint Master Academy, Kai is Google's Head of UX Methods and Processes. Through the development of design sprint and design thinking curriculum and training programs, she has created a community of expert facilitators at Google.

Listen in to learn more about Google Sprint Masters, the delicate balance between data and design, and how knowledge sharing creates resilient product teams.

Show Highlights

[5:27] The delicate balance between data and design

[11:08] The advent of the virtual facilitator

[21:35] Google Sprint Masters

[26:13] How knowledge sharing creates resilient product teams

[31:31] Embracing asynchronous meetings

Links | Resources

Kai on LinkedIn

About the Guest

Kai Haley, Head of UX Methods and Process at Google, works with teams to define product visions, drive successful user-centered products, and develop an innovation culture across all of Google. As Lead of the Sprint Master Academy, she also develops curriculum and training programs for Google's expert team of facilitators.

Voltage Control is a facilitation agency that helps teams work better together with custom-designed meetings and workshops, both in-person and virtual. Our master facilitators offer trusted guidance and custom coaching to companies who want to transform ineffective meetings, reignite stalled projects, and cut through assumptions. Based in Austin, Voltage Control designs and leads public and private workshops that range from small meetings to large conference-style gatherings. 

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Contact Voltage Control

Intro: Welcome to the Control the Room Podcast, a series devoted to the exploration of meeting culture and uncovering cures for the common meeting. Some meetings have tight control, and others are loose. To control the room means achieving outcomes while striking a balance between imposing and removing structure, asserting and distributing power, leaning in and leaning out, all in the service of having a truly magical meeting.

Douglas: Today I'm with Kai Haley, head of UX Methods and Process for the UX community at Google. She co-founded and leads to Google Sprint Master Academy, where they train and mentor facilitators within Google. Welcome to the show, Kai.

Kai: Thank you for having me.

Douglas: Of course. So, Kai, let's share with the listeners a little bit of a backstory around how you became such a mover and shaker at Google.

Kai: I joined Google about nine years ago. And prior to that, I had been at Yahoo! for six years, working as a visual designer on the front page there. I started my design career right out of college by starting a design studio focused on complete communication and branding programs for startups in Silicon Valley. So I got my learning on the job initially, which was an amazing experience. Not always advised, though. And while I was at Yahoo!, I went back to school and got my masters in design at CCA, when I realized I really wanted to formulate my design process and practice. And at CCA, I was actually introduced to a designer and teacher from IDEO, and that's where I learned about UX methods and process and got very inspired by the IDEO method and what they were doing there. So I brought some of those back to Yahoo! but really found when I got to Google that there was a much more nurturing environment for design thinking and that kind of collaborative work.

Douglas: You know, it's so important to have that nurturing environment and the support to do the work. I was recently reading a lot of material around an FBI negotiator who was there in the early days, and there wasn't a lot of support, you know? So it was like kind of two jobs. One is learning the material and getting really good at the craft, but then also the diplomacy of trying to convince everyone around you that this new approach is much better.

Kai: Absolutely. And I'll be honest. When I first got to Google nine years ago, the UX community there was quite small. So they were just starting to develop the design-sprint way of working then. And a lot of the hard work that was done at that time was kind of building that culture or building the buy in of better ways to work together. So it wasn't necessarily a smooth and easy sailing process, but the environment at Google has always been receptive to experimentation and working on how to work better together.

Douglas: I think that's pretty clear from the Project Aristotle and all the research that goes into psychological safety and work rules and all those things definitely seems to be a culture of, how do we have better workplace culture and collaboration?

Kai: Absolutely. And that's actually one of the areas that I am focused on right now. In addition to, obviously, making better products, we always want to make more user-centered products, and that's one of our principles here. But my focus is on helping to make a great space for cross-functional collaboration, to really support the UX role and the UX discipline, both inside and outside of Google.

Douglas: So, I'm really curious. As an insider, you probably have some really interesting insight into this, but one thing I've noticed is this paradox between data-driven decisions and then kind of more qualitative type of decision making. And UX tends to kind of sit at the boundary of that, right? There's things that UX does that's quantitative and things that they do that's qualitative. And Jake Knapp always talks about design sprint being so good at quick-and-dirty data before we're waiting around for perfect data. So I'm kind of curious what you found, having to use and leverage qualitative methods and approaches inside a company that's been known publicly to be so data focused and data driven.

Kai: You know, that's a really interesting question. Actually, there's a great video from my series Design Is […] called Design is [Data], if anyone is interested in deep diving into a case study on how design uses data to drive great design. When I was first—well, my second year at Google, I joined the search ads team, which is an incredibly data-driven team. And so that video outlines a project that we worked on, where we looked at how to leverage data to develop a design hypothesis and then use the data to push that design forward, meaning inform our decisions about design.

And working on Search at Google was incredibly transformative for me as a designer because it is so data driven and because it is so large, the user base is so broad, you really had to rely on the data to inform your intuition as a designer. So the qualitative aspect is really important, and we balance that at Google, where we do a lot of user interviews, more foundational research, where we try to understand how people think about things. And then we do experiment-focused either usability tests or we run an experiment on a specific portion of the traffic, like we would do a search, to take that hypothesis and see if it's working. So I always see it as like a balance of both and sometimes quite a delicate balance, especially if you are a UXer, which involves a really strong collaboration with your engineering team.

Douglas: Yeah. I remember reading this blog post years ago that I think came out of Google—yeah, it was Google Maps—and they were talking about drawing together. And so rather than the designers just sketching something, some brilliant solution, it's like, well—and rather than just sitting down and talking—they're like, "Well, sketch out. Can you sketch with me while we're talking?" And they noticed this pattern that came out of a lot of their conversations, and they just took a step back and looked at all the drawings that their interviewees had sketched out while they were talking. They all had this dog-bone shape to them. So there was like this epiphany that, oh, wow, everyone has this kind of dog-bone kind of reality, where it's like you do a lot of stuff around your house and a lot of stuff around your work. And then there's this tiny little connection between the two. And then that epiphany that comes from some of the qualitative stuff could then be married with some data, even ML type stuff, that you feed in this insight into something that's more data driven then you could get some really powerful things out of it.

Kai: Yeah. And that's where the design sprint as a structured collaboration process is really helpful because you can bring the data into the UX conversation early, and you can bring UX and data into the product conversation, right, the product-strategy conversation. So that convergence in an efficient and fast is really where we see a lot of benefit.

And to the point you were making earlier about fast-and-dirty data, sometimes it's also making the time to engage with it, because we're always working against a deadline or moving very quickly. But if we don't stop and analyze what we see and what we know together with different perspectives, we miss a lot of opportunities.

Douglas: Absolutely. And I think that not only taking the time to smell the roses, but like you say, if it's this confluence of threads, because the product team's thinking about a certain set of concerns, the data team has concerns, the engineers have concerns, the designers have concerns, and that's the power of the cross-functional teams. But we don't always, even though we're working as cross-functional teams, we don't always take the time to stop and then kind of look around and ask some of these questions.

Kai: Yeah. And that's where that—I mean, I had a real aha moment in the sprint with one of our partners, where we had a data analyst in the sprint. And, you know, I asked this question, like, "Well, where is the drop off happening? You have this funnel, and people are coming in here. Can you go see what is the level of drop off?" And she pulled up the computer right then and there and said, "Wow, actually, we've got a 40 percent drop off at this point," and that helped us to figure out what was actually going wrong with the design, and we could use that to help problem solve. So I was so excited by the data-analyst role after that. I was like, can we get a data analyst in our sprint?

Douglas: Isn't it amazing when you get the teams together with different capabilities and then folks within different parts of the organization are going to ask totally different questions, but they might ask questions that they can't answer, because you've got the whole kind of, let's say, a gamut of capabilities brought together, amazing things can happen just in those moments.

And, you know, I've seen things within a design spirit that were orthogonal to the work we were doing. In fact, it just happened earlier this week. John's facilitating the design sprint, and I was dipping in here and there just to see how things were going. One of the times I was listening in, I heard them say, "I should totally use this in that community outreach project we're working on." So it's like they're making these discoveries that on the surface feel fairly trivial, but I'm convinced that without the design sprint, they would not have made those discoveries and that project would have suffered, or it would have been mediocre and not as good as it could have been.

Kai: Absolutely, yeah.

Douglas: I notice it because I love this stuff, but I think a lot of times folks have these tangential benefits that they don't even realize or definitely don't necessarily associate to the design sprint because it wasn't even the core product they were working on. There's just these ancillary benefits.

Kai: Yeah. It's interesting how we get so many ancillary benefits from design sprints, particularly also with relationship building, shared vocabulary building, shared knowledge. But now that we are not able to all actually be in a room together, at least at current, at present time, we don't automatically get those benefits. We actually have to think very intentionally about what do we need to get out of a session and design for it, whereas we used to get these added benefits without even necessarily looking for them. We would come in with, well, we need a product outcome, and then benefit from all these side conversations and the increased team building and all that stuff.

But now if we need to build relationships, so if we have a new team or we have new people that we're working with that we need to actually form stronger connections with, we have to intentionally design that because the virtual experience doesn't create it in the way that just being together does.

Douglas: 100 percent. And, you know, we've talked a lot about this notion that ultimately all of these virtual tools are in their infancy. It's sort of like the way e-commerce was in the early 2000s. We were still trying to figure it out, and what are the models that are going to stick? And Daniel talks a lot about, we've had thousands and thousands of years of learning how to meet in person, and we can lean on that knowledge and those customs. But virtually, we don't necessarily have the tooling and the skills where we can just walk into a room and it just naturally happens, like you're talking about. And so I agree it has to be highly designed in and really thoughtful.

And we talked a little bit about that in the preshow chat. It's had an impact on the training programs. I guess I'm just curious what you found you now have to focus on to make sure that Sprint Masters is successful in this virtual world.

Kai: Well, we have to teach them to pay closer attention to that, whereas initially we would sort of take that for granted. You're going to get this by bringing everyone in a room together. The difficult conversations are going to happen. You just have to nudge a little bit to make space for it, to ask the right questions. Now you have to teach not just how to be a facilitator but how to be a very mindful facilitator that's aware of the science and psychology of the virtual space, which, as you said, is very nascent. So we are teaching something as we're learning it. We're modeling it and learning as we go, which is amazing. Also, I can't say that we've gotten it right right now. We're trying it out. But at the same time, we also need to teach people, Googlers, the methodology, so we have the foundational knowledge that they need to gain, which is, what is a design sprint? When do I use it? What do I use it for? How do I scope it properly? All the basics. And then, how do I be a good facilitator? And then, how do I be a good facilitator in a virtual space that I'm maybe not comfortable in and maybe I have to find new tools and techniques for how to build presence or even to consider, what do my facilitator values like and how did they play out here?

Douglas: Yeah. I love this notion of values-based facilitation. It can be really powerful because you can show up in a real, authentic way.

Kai: Yeah, absolutely. And everyone has to find their own way, and that takes time to build your practice and what you feel comfortable with, your authentic self.

Douglas: Absolutely. I think there's a reason that the notion of having a practice is to label it with the word practice because it takes practice. You know, we can't just read a book and expect to be a great facilitator. We have to try things on for size and see what doesn't fit and actually go do the work. We're going to have to be willing to stumble a few times, pick ourselves up, and learn, okay, that didn't feel very authentic. Let me try something different.

Kai: Yeah, it's amazing. And the different ways that people learn is a thing that I have to always remind myself of, because how I learn is not the same way as how other people learn. So we're trying to make space for sort of a diversity of approaches.

Douglas: Yeah. I think as much as we can be multi-sensory as possible to where no matter where someone's at at any particular time, they relate to what we're trying to convey. I think that's pretty huge. And the training, you talked about connection, being able to observe people and draw them in. Have you found any good tactics or are there things you're recommending to your Sprint Masters around how to think about that in the virtual space or what the tools can allow us?

Kai: Yeah, I think there's a lot of great resources out there, but one of the things that we, just at a basic level, are trying to teach our facilitators is this idea of creating. I mean, we talk about creating and holding space in the physical space, but creating and holding the virtual space and making not just room for voices, but giving each person the opportunity to speak and be present. And we have such limited time, so it can be really hard to balance that. And I think that's really forefront on my mind right now because the getting the product outcomes and asking the strategic questions and pushing the thinking, we all feel relatively comfortable with that. But to do it in a way where you create and hold this space, where people feel safe to be creative, they feel connected, like you're saying, it really involves a delicate balance of speaking, being present, being called on, and a combination of, I hate to use the word icebreaker, but it's like activities that can be used to help us get to know each other better.

Douglas: Yeah, you know, it's funny. Icebreaker. Some folks dislike the term. And my perspective is that those are typically things that people throw around without much intention. Being true to what you were saying earlier, the virtual space requires even more intention than the physical space. And when we put those things in, we should be careful about what we're trying to accomplish and just be honest about it and communicate it so that it's well known.

Kai: Yeah. It's a great point about, I think especially in my early days of being a facilitator, I didn't have as much clarity when to use something like an icebreaker or an energizer or a "pair people up and talk about this thing" kind of activity and building that sort of the intuition of knowing, what do you need to do during, at what point throughout the sprint? When do you need to give people quiet moments to reflect? When do you need to build energy and get them feeling inspired and feeling seen or heard? Those are really nuanced things, and that's why I say I hate to use the word icebreaker because an icebreaker is something that you can just be like, "Oh, yeah, everyone stand up and organize yourself like a fruit." Sort by size and color or flavor. And that's fun, and it builds energy in a room, but it's not the same in virtual. So you have to pick very carefully.

Douglas: Absolutely. Even turn taking can be challenging in the virtual space. It's like in the physical space, you can say, "Okay, let's just go in a circle." In the virtual space, we have to think about new paradigms and what's our cadence and what are our signals.

Kai: Yeah. And it can be awkward and take extra time. And I'm just thinking, "Normally, this would take five minutes."

Douglas: It's amazing because some things move a lot faster. You know, if we're voting inside of MURAL or some other tool, it can go quite fast. And so we might have to intentionally slow it down so that it becomes more thoughtful.

Kai: Yeah, absolutely.

Douglas: You know, I think you guys share something in common with us in the sense that you tend to sometimes, or even often, have larger workshops, whereas a classic design sprint's seven people. We've discussed in the past how we've both had workshops that are quite more numerous than that. And I'm curious what sorts of things that you're doing in the virtual space to accommodate for larger audiences.

Kai: Yeah. It's hard. I'll just acknowledge that because we used to do 20-, 30-person sprints. And also, when it comes to training, I used to—I'd be like, "Sure, I could train 60 people. No problem," by myself in a room. But in the virtual space, because of the breakouts and it, just, it's different, so I have not run as many large sprints, though I did do a 45-person one two weeks ago. But what we do is we really rely heavily on breaking out into groups of five with facilitators within it. So it's just the scaled model. I just lean on my facilitator's more, and we'll make sure that each team has a POC or a lead of some kind.

I think it's possible—a lot of our Sprint Masters right now are just saying don't do it, which I understand that. And I think we used to say don't do virtual either, because it's just too complicated. So I think eventually we will find ways. And I really appreciate some of the tips and tricks that I learned from your large-virtual-meetings workshop. Seeing how you manage a group of that size I think is really helpful because you do want to approach it really differently. You're not going to do the around-the-room "show me that special item off your desk and tell me the history" when you've got 45 people. So you are approaching it from a different perspective, but it can be scaled.

Douglas: Absolutely. So coming back to the Sprint Master training, I'm curious. Ultimately, Google is supporting this initiative, so there's clearly an identified business value. For the business folks that are listening, what's the real purpose behind—like, why spend the time to train all these folks? What does that really open up for Google?

Kai: Well, it enables us to work more effectively cross functionally, and I think I've—I don't know how many times I've said the word cross-functional already. You can keep count—but there is so much value we all know that comes from that. And as a larger company, it's not a standard way of working. I think smaller startups will in general work more easily more cross functionally. But when you're in a larger organization with multiple product areas, working across products and working across end product and UX, more marketing, it's really critical to the success of the company. It's critical to understanding the business so that everybody who is working on product teams has that viewpoint across the company to working across those silos.

As the company grows, we need more and more people to do that work, to help with that work, and that's where the Google Spirit Masters come in. We train people across all the PAs, primarily in the UX discipline, but we do folks in some other roles as well, provide the training to them. And ultimately, they're not just running design sprints for their product area. So if you're a Sprint Master on Photos, you might raise your hand to go run a design sprint for Maps or for Cloud. And that also creates cross pollination of ideas and allows you to leverage solutions that have worked in one part of the company in other parts. So there's a lot of value there.

It allows us to work, we say, to accelerate our collaboration, accelerate our innovation, because it helps us to work faster as well. And it's not just faster, but it's more effectively as a group because teamwork is always harder than individual work.

Douglas: I guess one thing that I always loved to visualize the positive impacts is this notion of kind of flipping around your discovery process, because so often integrations start to happen later in the cycle. Even if we're doing continuous integration and all these good things, it's like if we're not doing a lot of this upfront discovery work together, then we discover those kind of break points later. And anyone in this, doing this work at all, knows that the later the discoveries happen, the more expensive they are to address. And sometimes it's too late because it's not going to make or break the project, but it would have created a little extra delight for the user, and it would have been cheap to do if we would've known about it early. But now it's too late.

Kai: Yeah, absolutely. And users don't care that the Photos team is different than the Maps team, you know? Users don't care that Search is a whole other team. Those product lines are not valuable to them. They pop back and forth across multiple suite of products, and we want that to be seamless for them. We want it to be the best experience it can. And when they're owned by different teams, that requires a lot of coordination.

Douglas: Yeah. It reminds me of Conway's Law. I don't know if you've run across this, but most people that have actually written software have seen it numerous times. It's basically the statement that says that any piece of software is going to resemble the structure of the organization that wrote that software. And so what you're describing is exactly the manifestation of Conway's Law, right? You've got these teams that are working on different portions, and at one level you could say they're working on different applications. But when, to your point, one of the user's using it, they're using the system, not an application. And so they're kind of moving fluidly around that. And how cohesive it is is going to depend on how much you can bridge those boundaries of the organization structure.

Kai: Yeah. And that's, in some ways, what the Sprint Masters are an antidote to at times, right?

Douglas: That's amazing.

Kai: Yeah.

Douglas: So you talked a little bit in the preshow chat about this notion of resilient product teams and how the sprint can help with that process. So I'm curious. I think our listeners would enjoy hearing a little bit about that because I think it's fascinating.

Kai: Yeah. Actually, when I think about the resilience on my side, it's maybe less about the sprint process itself and more about how you build a self-sustaining community. And that resilience comes from operating as, like, a learning organization, which means taking the time to reflect on what's working and what's not working, and then focusing on improving the process as you go. You know, that's very standard when you think about a learning organization.

But the example that we recently had was as we had to pivot to moving all of our sprints to virtual and helping 400 Sprint Masters build confidence in the virtual world, also not being experts ourselves, we really turned to this group to build a platform where we could learn from each other. And that's where I see a lot of resilience happening, when you have a system in place for people to solve together the challenges or the things that they're facing, which means it's not me coming in and saying, "I know the answer here, and I'm going to teach all of you how to do this," but people joining forces and saying, "I'm trying this thing over here. I've got an experiment running. I'm going to feed it back in." And my team being that central hub that creates a space for that amplification and knowledge sharing so that we can rapidly adapt and build new ways of thinking. And that sort of comes from how you approach that evolution, how you approach a learning organization.

Douglas: Wow, yeah. I love this concept of the learning organization and this group that can facilitate and be a conduit for these learnings, to kind of come and be dispersed throughout the other teams and whatnot, I think that's a fantastic concept. And we talked a little bit also about embracing the experimentation mindset. And I've been referring to this as the sprint mindset in the context of design sprints and how it's so critical for folks to not only see the benefit. You know, we talked about the direct benefits of how it's moving your project forward and getting people aligned. And then also the ancillary benefits of, like, these weird connections or these epiphanies you have that influence other projects. Then, if you can leave that workshop and have these mindsets permeate all the work you do, then it has this kind of like compounding effect throughout the organization.

Kai: Yeah, absolutely. And it's something I've been thinking about a lot recently, and I think you know because I reached out to you for more resources, because I think this is something that it's not as easy as it sounds. You're like, "Yeah, just design and experiment and learn from it." There's a way in which oftentimes we will do things and we haven't fully articulated what it is that we want to learn from it. And I think that is one of the benefits or it's sort of the strength of the sprint process, where you go in and say, "What do we know, what do we don't know, and what do we want to know?" And a lot of times, people will think that they're experimenting because they're being scrappy and moving fast, but they're not learning as they go. And that's, like, the fundamental benefit comes when you stop and reflect and learn and improve. So I think it's incredibly valuable for any organization to look at how do we embrace experimentation and really figure out how to bake it into the way that you work.

Douglas: Yeah. I love that. We picked up this concept from the military, which is, you know, people always talk about lessons learned, but basically their stance on this is, like, people use the term lessons learned inappropriately. And most of the time, what they're talking about are lessons identified. And we haven't really learned the lesson until we've actually addressed it and done something about it. So we can identify it all the time, but if we don't actually make the change, we haven't actually done anything about it. We haven't addressed it. We're just located a problem.

Kai: Yeah. And that happens a lot. We're like, "There's a problem. There's a problem." You move on to the next thing, and then you're like, okay. It's human nature, too, you know?

Douglas: Absolutely. And, you know, I think that's one of the beautiful things about facilitation and a lot of these methods is they're designed with human nature in mind and how we can take advantage of the good parts and use them against some of the things that are not so great about human nature.

Kai: Yeah, absolutely. I spend a lot of time saying, you know, "I'm trying to combat design fixation here. Don't spend too much time on that sketch. I don't want you to get too attached to that idea."

Douglas: Yeah. I ran into a term recently called street psychologist, which I thought was pretty incredible. And I think essentially to be a great facilitator is you have to kind of have to be a street psychologist.

Kai: Kind of like an armchair—

Douglas: Yeah, exactly.

Kai: —an armchair psychologist, but we're doing it from the street. I like it.

Douglas: I don't know just enough to understand what we're dealing with.

Kai: Absolutely.

Douglas: So I'm curious. If you could change anything about most meetings, what would it be?

Kai: Well, that's a very broad question because I have all kinds of different meetings. A lot of my meetings are not bad currently. But I would say I find really, really large, kind of all handsy-type meetings to be ones that I often wonder why we do them. So I think there is a way in which sometimes we have meetings that don't really need to be in person or synchronous, as we say. And I think we could be more creative about how we deliver content asynchronously to people and that when we do bring people together, we design for people being together as opposed to a one-way delivery of content, because I often feel like now, even more than ever, a one-way delivery of content is consumed one way. So I would say really embracing when things are bi-directional or multidirectional and designing for that to make the most use of people's time when they're all actually being asked to be together at the same time.

Douglas: Absolutely. We often talk about, is a meeting purely informative, and if so, there's probably better vehicles than bringing everyone together unless we really want to get people's reactions. But if we're truly wanting to get everyone's reactions, like you say, it needs to be designed in a bi-directional way.

Kai: Absolutely.

Douglas: Excellent.

Well, Kai. It's been a pleasure chatting with you today. And I'm sure people are curious how they might be able to follow your work or get in touch or just kind of see more about what you are working on. How can they find you?

Kai: You can always find me on Twitter, @kaihaley, and LinkedIn. And then, of course, the designsprintkit.withgoogle.com is a great site where I post case studies and content for folks, if anyone's interested more in our design-sprint information.

Douglas: Excellent. Thank you so much, Kai.

Kai: Thank you so much for having me. It was such a pleasure.

Outro: Thanks for joining me for another episode of Control the Room. Don't forget to subscribe to receive updates when new episodes are released. If you want more, head over to our blog, where I post weekly articles and resources about working b

"Make moments of fun, of celebration, and acknowledging that we're all accomplishing good things together. And micro celebrations and bigger celebrations and learn how to celebrate remotely." Mariano Suarez-Battan

In this episode, I'm very pleased to be speaking with Mariano Battan, CEO & Co-Founder of MURAL, a digital workspace that we at Voltage Control love to use both internally and for design sprints. Mariano says he loves to dream about new things, and sometimes he can make them come true.

Listen in to find out the power of purposeful silence, how to power up your team's imagination at work, and why you should be blocking out time for kids and coffee.

Show Highlights

[5:10] Multi-threaded thinking in the digital realm

[12:35] Blocking time for kids and coffee

[17:56] Powering up imagination at work

[26:09] Making space for celebration

[32:56] Purposeful silence

[37:12] Micro-celebrations, remotely

Links | Resources

MURAL

Mariano on LinkedIn

Mariano on Twitter

About the Guest

Mariano Suarez-Battan is the CEO and Co-founder of MURAL, a digital workspace for visual collaboration. He is accelerating innovation by providing facilitators with the tools and inspiration that they need to make global change. Before MURAL, Mariano created video games through his studio, Three Melons, which was acquired by Disney in 2010.

Voltage Control is a facilitation agency that helps teams work better together with custom-designed meetings and workshops, both in-person and virtual. Our master facilitators offer trusted guidance and custom coaching to companies who want to transform ineffective meetings, reignite stalled projects, and cut through assumptions. Based in Austin, Voltage Control designs and leads public and private workshops that range from small meetings to large conference-style gatherings. 

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Contact Voltage Control

Intro: Welcome to the Control the Room Podcast, a series devoted to the exploration of meeting culture and uncovering cures for the common meeting. Some meetings have tight control, and others are loose. To control the room means achieving outcomes while striking a balance between imposing and removing structure, asserting and distributing power, leaning in and leaning out, all in the service of having a truly magical meeting.

Douglas: Today I'm with Mariano Battan. Mariano's the co-founder and CEO of MURAL. He's on a mission to inspire, enhance, and connect imagination workers so that they can collaborate and problem solve wherever they may be. Welcome to the show, Mariano.

Mariano: Hello, Doug. And glad to be here.

Douglas: I'm really curious, Mariano. How did you get your start working in this field of bringing remote workers together to collaborate and do this imagine work and found a company to do that? It's amazing.

Mariano: It is. And I was fortunate to be a mobile or remote worker. Ten years ago, I had a video-games company, and that company ultimately got acquired by Disney. So I was working for Disney. I'm from Argentina originally, but I was in the Mountain View office quite often. So I was "remote" because I was not really remote; I was just, like, distributed right? So my programming team was in Argentina. I was mostly in the U.S. I was designing a new game called Emotions. I was using Keynote to collect inspiration, and we can go further into the problem, but that sparked the idea of having an online space that felt more like a whiteboard, felt more like a project room. That's how we started 10 years ago already.

Douglas: Yeah, it's amazing. You know, I watched your presentation from MURAL Imagine recently, and you were sharing how you got your start using PowerPoint, or just reflecting on how you use it and how that helps you collect your thoughts. And it really, the light bulb went off for me, because we always talk about prototypes can be anything that we bring together to help visualize our ideas. And so we often talk about how PowerPoint can be a prototype. And so MURAL, in a way, is a tool to help build prototype or ideas and present them.

Mariano: Definitely a tool in a space to make space as we call for imagination, right? The reality is that words are great in humans. We rely on them to communicate. But, yeah, a picture, multiple pictures, a diagram, definitely much more powerful than a description, especially an oral description. There's a lot been written on, yeah, the infamous Amazon six-pager. So it can do write ups. I think there's room for everything, right? There's definitely room for the write-up ones, the thought or the idea or the information is already cooked. But in that work in progress, I think there's more space for more flexible space to gather your thoughts, get reactions from others, and build together that idea. And then, yes, putting in a more linear way to share out.

Douglas: Yeah. It reminds me. One of my favorite facilitation techniques is just to listen and capture what's the words that are flying by. You are like, words are great, but. And that's the problem is when words are just word soup and they're all flying by and they just evaporate. It almost reminds me of one of those little videos or animations where, like, the thought bubbles are coming up and then just disappearing. And it's important that we capture all those things because if we step back and look at it, we can find and visualize where our discrepancies are. If someone says, "This thing needs to be magical," and someone else says, "It should not be magical," we need to understand, because they probably aren't completely disagreeing, but on the surface it appears so. But if we don't capture those things and visualize them, there's no way for us to dive in and understand that.

Mariano: You know it's funny that teams that capture an idea is that it shouldn't be one person doing describe role. It's all the people involved in a meeting or a workshop should be participants and active participants. And one of the important things, too, there is not only sharing, but also active listening, and active listening and hopefully also documenting, because it's amazing to see once people start documenting and other folks that are listening to a presenter or something, it's funny to see how they add new ways of seeing whatever comment or thought. It's amazing to see the gifs or sketches or icons start complimenting that core phrase that was said by someone.

Douglas: Yeah. It's like we talk about one of the tenants of facilitation being yes/and. And essentially what you're describing is the whole team is yes/and-ing silently and visually based on what's being said. And so one little thought nugget that someone vocalizes can be transformed, almost like in parallel—talk about distributed working, right? We're all in parallel or contributing to the same thing in a way that you just couldn't do. If it was synchronous, it would take us much longer.

Mariano: Yes. And I always wonder, like in the old way, when we were in person, and, I mean, one person was talking in a group of 10 or something, of course, other people were thinking about things. And as I said, like when I sort of- the good practitioners of this type of work. They were holding their own posts and adding their own things. But sometimes the synchronicity there failed to leave the trace, right? They would forget about it, or what I was thinking there. When I'm seeing workshops happening in a digital realm right now on MURAL, I'm seeing that there's a lot of, like, a multithreaded thinking going on, which I don't really know yet if it's good or bad, but it's something. It's true, because people were thinking anyway or reacting anyway to someone presenting. Now, this thing allows them to document that reaction to the presentations more fluidly. And I would love to make this a videocast next time so we can show some of that.

Douglas: Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's really fascinating because I've seen that phenomenon as well. And it's not just limited to presentations. I've seen it organically evolve, like even through a debrief or a fishbowl conversation, where you've got some folks talking, and then others are documenting and reacting to the talking. So they are contributing to Timestampwhat's being captured, and it's not just through one lens, right? If I'm a facilitator, I'm trying to capture as much as I can. But I definitely know there are moments where, "Man, there was something he said right before that. I totally forgot it." And, you know, so part of it's just kind of keeping up with everything, but also there's how we interpret it, how we just subtly yes/and it. It's really pretty incredible. 

So there's a negative side to all of this awesome stuff that's happening. And I'm sure you're no stranger to this, having a tool, a software product, that is essential to remote work, and remote work just becoming the only way that we can work during the pandemic. You are just slammed with lots of new sign ups. And I'm sure that's just increased the number of meetings and the amount of coordination and things that needs to get done. And Zoom fatigue is a serious thing. And how do we, as meeting attendees, meeting facilitators, how do we address these concerns around remote facilitation?

Mariano: So there's a lot in that question, so I'll start with the fatigue part. As you can listen to my voice, I need a rest. I'm doing speech-therapy sessions and also learning how to speak. It seems like I've been yelling at the screen, right? I don't know how to speak, and I'm learning and relearning how to do that. So there's a lot of things around meetings, right? There's the being present and all the hours spent working and sitting down or standing up. There's the input method of audio for my voice that's not working. And yes, all of this gets accelerated with the fact that, in our case in particular, a lot of the world relies on us for a particular type of remote work. MURAL is not needed for all types of remote work. Probably, Zoom is much more ubiquitous and present, right? And they place all the blame on something like Zoom fatigue, where, again, they are a medium and a tool, and how people are using them is both good and bad and with other its implications.

But, yes, we're fortunate to be able to support a lot of folks that are interested in bringing imagination to their work, how we call it, right? So those important moments around planning, around strategizing, around defining the future, but also using visual methods in design and in Agile to help us reflect, to help us celebrate, and do certain things that are little abstract parts of work where it's super important, especially to align teams that are now all over the world. 

So, yes, Doug, it's a responsibility because it's not just about letting people work, but also helping them improve how they work. It's not possible to run an eight-hour workshop online, or a three-day, eight-hour workshop online. And people are starting to quickly learn that, unlearn that, and learn the new way. So we've been doing a lot of work not only making sure that the systems are stable, scaling, trustworthy, but also bringing in features and know-how for the end users who are super under a lot of pressure and nervous because they're learning ways of working and ways of working remote. So it's tiring and rewarding.

Douglas: I would like to take just a moment to talk about that. You know, I've definitely experienced just exhaustion from having to pivot my company and make sure that things are pointed in the right direction and all that. And I actually started having massive headaches. It turned out it was a lot from eyestrain, so I had to adjust my monitors, get new glasses with blue blockers, and progressive lenses. I'm getting old, Mariano. So I'm curious if you have any tips, any advice for folks that are, how can we step away from this stuff or how can we adjust our imagination work and how we use the tools to make it less stressful, or whatnot?

Mariano: Sure. There's definitely, like, a design of the day and the week component to the question, and then in particular, going into the actual work. And things that I've been doing to design the week is explicit about designing the week and the day, and then things happen and we change it. But at least filling the time to say, okay, what would I like to accomplish this weekend? What would I like to accomplish for myself, for my family, and for the business, too? So in the last few weeks, I didn't respect it much, but in the beginning of the pandemic, in the first couple months, very much, which is two hours per day blocked for kids and coffee. I mean, in the middle of the day so that we can also do exercising with kids. So it's like I hit two birds with a stone, and everybody is happy about that. And of course, time to reflect and time to plan baked in in the beginning and the end of the week.

Douglas: So, I want to dig into this exercise with the kids. So tell me how that works.

Mariano: Well, it's hard to be a teacher. I mean, especially if you're all day and being a "teacher" inside your company. So with kids, your level of energy's low, so I found the best play sessions with them are also, in a way, facilitated. I've been doing sessions where we design a project or we design a bike route. And those are the ones that are more rewarding, where there is like a little bit of planning time, a little bit of execution time, and then reflection time. Or I bought a set of cones, for example, and we put in the street entrance and designed, you know paths for exercises. We run here, we walk there, run sideways here maybe with the ball, because if not, it's very loose. Play is really hard to deal with, especially as an adult. You don't have the power, infinite power of imagination that the kids do have. So, yeah, little scripted has been helping me. And of course it's hard to persevere. But I come back every week, and at least once in that week, I go back to some sort of script method. 

I've actually been thinking about how to take that to work, right, because in the old way, maybe, like, last year, for example, we were able to bring the whole company to Argentina for a week, and we had a lot of time to just hang out. But really, I always thought about the hanging-out part of work. I say something that also got me a little nervous because I thought we could be using it for better work. I mean, in a way, as a fan of sports, right, I like that sports car, like a beginning, a middle, and an end. They have rules, and then you can do some improvisation in the middle. But you know what the purpose of the get-together is, when it comes to work, water-cooler time, I never found that super interesting. 

So, yeah, trying to guide just play time and not scripted time, but using scripted and play-guided script to help us bring in the creative juices, level the playing field for introverts and extroverts, to be able to participate, and try to persevere in doing that over and over so that we can get better at it because it's not easy to connect with people through a screen.

Douglas: Yeah. It reminds me of this BBC report that I read that said most pointless meetings are actually a form of therapy. And the thing that became really clear to me was, well, if that's the case, we should be intentional about it rather than just letting it organically happen, because people need it. Let's program it in and make sure we have really good therapy and we really check in. And, you know, I think that's a reason why a lot of people design an icebreaker. It's unfortunate the way a lot of it develops, though, because when it's not really intentional and not tied to the purpose, there's a real missed opportunity because we can do something that's gracious and purposeful. And again, it can take us a bit further. But you're absolutely right that we have to have time for the team.

Mariano: Yeah. Making time for no goals but structured play is interesting.

Douglas: Yeah. I want to come back to the ninja course that you built out in your driveway. Did you guys use MURAL to plan it before you went out to put it together?

Mariano: No, dude. It's too much in front of Mural, it's uh-

Douglas: No doubt. That's like trying to get away, right?

I've always respected MURAL for your efforts to support facilitators. It's very clear that as a design and product consideration, when you're thinking about your roadmap and building features to support what we do as facilitators. And so I'd just like to hear a little bit about your philosophy around why that's important and where you see it could go, not in so much in the sense of, like, what's next on the roadmap, but from a philosophical standpoint. Like, where could that take us?

Mariano: Sure. So you mention mission early on or on imagination workers and powering them up globally. So when I talk about why we do what we do, and generally, I start with imagination and making room for imagination at work, make space for imagination at work. But imagination at work is not easy, right. For some of us, for certain cases, it may come naturally, but there's a lot of paralysis. So that's why we also believe—and we learned this early on in our journey—that the guided methods that people like you, Douglas, like, consultants and folks that are thinking of how to make this type of work happen—have put together alignment diagrams and methods were key to bring these teams together and ultimately help them with the job of creative problem solving and creative problem solving. So that's one part, right? Like, we don't support all types of work in MURAL. We just don't need it for everything. 

But when there's something big to go through with, again, workshop-type mindset, you should probably rely on MURAL for that. And you should rely on MURAL whenever and wherever you might be. I mean, the idea that we go to innovation centers to innovate, that was always interesting to me because shouldn't we be innovating in small and big scale all the time? So that's the obvious thing around remote work that we support. 

But then the fourth bucket, pillar, or vector, whatever we want to call it, that we care about is facilitation. And as you mentioned, that we have a team focus on that. We have content based on that, because you observed at the best-run meetings there are some professional facilitators, or someone takes the role or many of them take the role of a facility—well, facilitation, right?. Like, doing facilitation. So we believe it's a core competency for now and the future and because of the need for more multidisciplinary teams. And yes, and doing this in person is hard. Doing this remotely is virtually impossible. So that's why we tried to do a lot of community, a lot of content sharing, and a lot of little features in the product that we believe could be great for folks like you to be able to guide, to ask questions, to bring a little bit of fun and play into these meetings, and, ultimately, make your participants achieve the end goal of the meeting.

Douglas: Yeah. It just dawned on me that good agenda design can also really improve this sense of Zoom fatigue and meeting fatigue, because if we're just going back-to-back meetings and there's not a good sense of closure, there's no good arc—I mean, imagine if you went to the movies, and you watched a movie, and every movie just ended right at the climax, and then you were right at the next movie, and it's just like action just thrown at you the entire time, there's no on-ramp. It'd be like having to jump off your—you're flying to Cincinnati, and you have to jump off and parachute down to get off the plane.

Mariano: I'm watching the timer right now in the podcast software. I'm realizing at minute 22, 23 now, and yet being aware enough of time, of first starting the meeting also with a purpose, right? Why are we meeting? What's the end goal of this meeting? And trying to have an agenda, but also acknowledge that maybe there's some flexibility that you can bake into that agenda. And if you're not able to close the meeting, probably there are two things. One is if you're consistently not closing in time, probably there's like a meeting design there, you might need more meeting time or more workshop time in the future to make sure that you get to closing. Or the nice thing about this remote situation that we're all in is that you can also call it a pause, right? And open up the next day or next week. People are starting to realize that they can unbundle workshops and unbundle meetings and not squeeze out everything from that workshop that first day. So there's a little bit of flexibility in my malleability that we're able to do to have here in the work that we have right now where we are all peers and that we're checking in digitally to the space.

Douglas: I love that concept of unbundling and how we can split workshops apart. And I'm going to switch gears here a little bit and talk about something that I heard from one of your MURAL employees, Hailey Temple, I was sharing a Loom over. There was something neat that I'd found about how I was using MURAL, and I was trying to explain it to her. And I thought, "It'd be so much easier just to record a quick Loom so she can see what I'm talking about." And then she's like, "Oh, I love Loom. Mariano always records really great Looms for the team to get us motivated." And I thought to myself, that's incredible. Such a great use of a tool for a distributed team to get them excited and motivated. So I would just love to hear some inspiration you might be to offer other leaders. Like, what should they be thinking about? Why do you use these tools to send videos out to the team? Why is that important? And how can we motivate our distributed teams?

Mariano: Sure. So, yeah, normally it's about recording media, screen recording video. There's another one called Vidyard that's more customer facing. And there's probably a few others. And so, we went through a very tough time, right, in last six months now, maybe four, depending on the part of the world. We're hitting our lowest pandemic rate. It's not a, we say, to work from home when we're walking around and being free of working on the beach or whatever. People are locked down in their houses in Argentina, where a lot of our guys are for 120 days now or so. So it's super, super tough to order them. So, acknowledging that and acknowledging it in a way that it's, again, as a human as possible is important, and I'm putting that on video. And on video that I generally compliment with a MURAL, with some visuals to explain that it has been a good practice and something that people appreciate. And it doesn't take me much time, and people can watch it in whichever time they want. And, yeah, I'm getting positive reactions because I appreciate their work; knowledge that it's not easy; share some thoughts, ideas, and plans. 

And another thing that we do also and we did and I was super happy how it all went out is that we made space for celebration also. When we wrapped up our very challenging, positively challenging quarter in June, in November we coordinated to make sure that we sent boxes to everybody in the company with a little mimosa kit and a little pub party bulbs and content and Schwab from the company to each of them in their homes. And I made time to celebrate. And I came back to the message that I was repeating over and over and over with new people coming in. It's necessary in those Loom videos. And I repeated that message again on the accounts  where we celebrated. Acknowledging that, again, we had accomplished something big together, and because we worked as a team and that now was a good time for us to acknowledge all of that and celebrate. And there was probably one of our, like a good moment where we also came together as a team and reflected back on those initial plans videos into something that came full circle. And I look forward to doing more of those again.

Douglas: That's amazing. I have been thinking a lot about tactile objects and supplies and things, and bringing that into your workshops or you're all hands or any kind of experience. Just because we're all distributed and we can't be in office together doesn't mean we can't send everybody the T-shirt or the awesome care package. That's really great.

Mariano: There's a company called Sliced in New York, and they call it an API to sell pizzas. And I've been thinking a cool feature for the future would be, like, press button, send pizzas, through MURAL. So we'll see how that goes, and it gets complicated with global teams, though.

Douglas: Yeah, no doubt. Incredible. 

So one of my favorite questions is around meetings, of course, on my mission to help people have better meetings everywhere. And I'm just curious what your go-to is. If you could change anything about the way most meetings are run, what would it be?

Mariano: I mentioned something before, right, so I think there's two things. One is acknowledge which type of meeting it is, and related to that, open up with the end goal of the meeting. For example, when I do first candidate meetings on recruiting, I try to be really curious, but very explicit about the end goal of this meeting is to see if we could be a fit for each other. I took that one from sales training, actually. There's a firm that we hire called Winning by Design that I really like. And they teach the sales guys to open up with appreciate taking the time today. Check time. Do you still have 30 minutes for us to go through this meeting? And the third thing is the end goal of this meeting is to see if we could be a fit for each other. And the corollary of that also is if in the middle of this meeting we believe that we're not a fit for each other, for whichever reason, we accomplished the goal, and we can end the meeting earlier. If we also accomplish the goal of, we can, we can be a fit for each other,  great. And maybe you do another check in later on to accomplish another goal, which is go deep into your requirements or go deep into your background to understand if we are a fit for each other. 

So I think that opening up, we have very clear goal is something that is very important. And the other thing that it's also related to the beginning is related to checking in. So checking in, fully checking in as individuals, as collaborators, and acknowledge that that's our goal, which is the role of each other, and how are you going to be participating here? Not as spectators, hopefully, or if you are spectators, acknowledge it and claim your role, but also acknowledging that maybe you're not needed for a meeting and that's okay. So goal first, roles and responsibilities second, and checking in, and checking in with a fun exercise that gets the creative juices going.

Douglas: Now you've got me curious. What is your favorite check-in exercise?

Mariano: This is not my favorite one, but it's a funny one. The other day, I put up the lyrics of Despacito, the song. And I had each of my leadership team members go for a phrase. And it was hilarious to hear the English-speaking guys trying to sing Despacito in English.

Douglas: That's amazing. That reminds me of one that, essentially, everyone, first round, puts a name of a song, like a hit song, one of those songs that just gets stuck in your head, you know? So everyone contributes one, and then we shuffle them up. And then everyone draws the name, and then you have to sing that song. So you had to sing the song you randomly drew. And yeah, it's a little awkward.

Mariano: So, I mean, a question that we ask new team members to reply to when we introduce themselves to everybody else. The first one is, like, how you plan to make an impact. Sorry—so, first of all, why did you choose MURAL? The second one is, how you plan to make an impact. And then the third one is, tell us something weird about you. So I think that—and why are you in this meeting, how you plan to make an impact in this meeting, and then something fun are all things that we could bring into important big meetings.

Douglas: Yeah, that's great. You know, it doesn't have to be the all hands for, you know, someone's new. That's when you could be pretty evergreen, those questions, especially if you shift them from the company to the meeting, it's awesome. 

So I'm curious. What have you recently discovered or kind of bumped into that gives you hope and makes you curious?

Mariano: That silence was on purpose. So the use of silence, right? I mean, as evidenced by my voice, I have not been silent enough. I mean, talking, talking, talking, pitching, pitching, pitching. And silence, two observations. One is from the sales training, was, like, leave space after a question. Let them answer, and let them continue answering. Let you're, the person you're interviewing, just go for it. And the other day, we invited Maria Judis to talk, and she opened up with a silent moment, and also put together, like, a little sticky note with on camera that said, "Wait," and says, "Yeah. Why am I talking?" And as a moment to, again, leave space for others to do that, especially someone they want them to share, it is close and so on. So, yeah, the use of silence. And it's weird in a remote environment because sometimes silence is catalyzed via a faulty mute set up; or bad connection; or am I talking? You're talking? And people don't want to bump into each other. So, yeah, I mean, silence as a tool.

Douglas: I love it. And that's the second time "wait" has appeared on the podcast, so it's a popular one in these circles, especially with active listening being so critical to facilitation. So I love that you bring that up. 

I've even been exploring with using MURAL as a tool to allow us to play with silence. And so we'll do some work in the plenary session where everyone's together in the main Zoom room. And then I'll send folks into the MURALs to do some work. I won't send them to the breakout rooms yet, but they're already working in their breakout-room area in the MURAL. The reason I don't send them to the breakout room yet is that it's much easier to enforce that silence, because if anyone starts talking, then another group can hear them. And so if I send them to their breakout rooms immediately, then they all start talking in the breakout rooms. And so designing around that silence can be a real powerful thing.

Mariano: You mentioned that we have a facilitation team. That's one of things we observe, right? Besides unbundling and synchronous and synchronous work, even within the "synchronicity" of a meeting or a workshop, there are moments where you want solo work, small teamwork, plenaries, as you mentioned. And as a matter of fact, you showed me some of that when we were in the Google Sprint conference in San Francisco and you were facilitating your workshop on liberating structures. So I don't need to teach you. And I learned that from you. So we have a feature coming soon called private mode where people will be in private mode. We acknowledge that people also do breakout MURALs or breakout sessions in a MURAL. So we're baking that. As you know, there's a new celebration function in the product or the timer or the whole thing. So that's where we do most of our innovation, to be honest with you, right, on the little things that add up to what we call the facilitation superpowers, where yeah, it's two-hundred bucks for facilitators to be able to run better meetings. But a good practice, as you mentioned, is definitely leave time for solo work first and then share out.

Douglas: So, Mariano, I'd love to hear any kind of final thoughts you might have for the listeners. Anything that's top of mind that you'd love to share?

Mariano: Insist on celebrations. We're all going through a very challenging time. I mean, the virus, spikes are coming all over the world. We're going to have to go back inside. Winter will be coming soon in the northern hemisphere. Pay attention to the southern hemisphere, people that are shut down and in winter and cold. It's not fun there. So make moment of fun, of celebration, and acknowledging that we're all accomplishing good things together. And micro celebrations and bigger celebrations and learn how to celebrate remotely, which is super hard. And so that would be my ask for all of you.

Douglas: Excellent. Well, Mariano, it's been a pleasure having you on the show today. 

How can folks find you if they want to look up your work, find MURAL, find out more about you. Where should they go?

Mariano: The website is mural.co. And my Twitter or LinkedIn, I use batmelon. It's a joke that I can tell the audience at some point, but it relates to Batman and Three Melons, my game studio. We tried to show up being dogs, being webinars, and inspire everybody with our brain to use it for imagination. We believe that imagination and collaboration, it's what makes us human, right? The Homo sapiens that started our civilizations imagined language, imagined civilizations, shared them with each other, and for small teams to be able to build civilization. And the good thing about computers taking over knowledge work and data crunching and other processing is that we can come back to this type of work that is so rewarding and so fun.

 So follow us if you care about that. And thank you, Douglas, for also spreading the gospel of facilitation and reward work. Glad to be here in the show. And hello, everybody out there that are facilitators. We want to help you out, and reach out if you need anything. 

Douglas: Thanks again, Mariano. It's been a pleasure.

Marino: Cheers, mate.

Outro: Thanks for joining me for another episode of Control the Room. Don't forget to subscribe to receive updates when new episodes are released. If you want more, head over to our blog, where I post weekly articles and resources about working better together, voltagecontrol.com.

"We are both in this radical honesty together where...we have a structure that's going to hold us as we evolve and change together and as individuals...I witnessed that many people don't feel safe to evolve and change and be themselves. So if you can't change with the people around you, I don't know that you are allowing yourself to change." Alexandra Jamieson

Today, I'm excited to speak with Alexandra Jamieson of Super Size Me fame. For two decades, Alexandra has worked professionally as a coach, driving creative women to build their visions for success. She is also an award-winning author, a podcast host, and an artist. She says she is on this earth to help others be rid of imposter syndrome and claim their worth (and wealth!).

In today's episode, we speak about effective communication, couples' coaching, and meeting snacks. Listen in to find out how to hone your communication skills like a professional musician mastering their instrument and why a movement break is like MiracleGro for your brain.

Show Highlights

[0:55]  Supersize Me & going viral for quitting veganism.

[5:05] The tiny thing that makes couples communicate effectively.

[14:51] Why effective communication is like playing an instrument.

[18:10] How going to bed angry can actually benefit your relationship.

[29:35] No more conference cookies.

[34:52] The All-In Method.

[37:56] Alexandra's challenge for the listener.

Links | Resources

Alexandra on LinkedIn

Radical Alignment: A book about difficult conversations

Alexandra's podcast, Her Rules Radio, on Stitcher

About the Guest

For 20 years, Alexandra has coached creators, founders, and leaders on the rise to use their strengths, values, intuition, and creative thinking to achieve success on their own terms. She loves championing women and their creative visions by helping them feel worthy of their desires, allowing them to begin bringing their visions to reality and transforming the world. Outside of her coaching work, Alexandra has hosted her #1 podcast Her Rules Radio for 6 years and written 5 best-selling books. You also may know her as co-producer and co-star of the Oscar-nominated documentary Super Size Me.

Voltage Control is a facilitation agency that helps teams work better together with custom-designed meetings and workshops, both in-person and virtual. Our master facilitators offer trusted guidance and custom coaching to companies who want to transform ineffective meetings, reignite stalled projects, and cut through assumptions. Based in Austin, Voltage Control designs and leads public and private workshops that range from small meetings to large conference-style gatherings. 

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Android

Stitcher

Voltage Control on the Web

Contact Voltage Control

Intro: Welcome to the Control the Room Podcast, a series devoted to the exploration of meeting culture and uncovering cures for the common meeting. Some meetings have tight control, and others are loose. To control the room means achieving outcomes while striking a balance between imposing and removing structure, asserting and distributing power, leaning in and leaning out, all in the service of having a truly magical meeting.

Douglas: Today I'm with Alexandra Jamieson, coproducer and costar of Super Size Me. Today we're here to talk about her fifth book that's upcoming, will be released in August, called Radical Alignment. Welcome to the show, Alexandra.

Alexandra: Thank you so much for having me.

Douglas: So, for starters, I'd love to hear about how you got started in the work you do.

Alexandra: It's been a long and tangled road to be an author and coach. I've been an author and a coach for over a decade—as you said, this is my fifth book—and I really started in the health-and-wellness world. And we were about the same age when you and I both discovered we had these massive health issues in our mid-20s and that food was the answer. So I dove deep. I'm a two-feet-in kind of person. I discovered food is healing, food is medicine. Went to culinary school, became a vegan chef, did catering, etc.. And right around that time, I met my now ex. But we made the movie Super Size Me together. He ate nothing but McDonald's for a month, for anybody who remembers that. He got really sick, and I put him on my vegan detox plan afterwards to, like, clean up his liver, his high cholesterol, all the stuff that happened to him so quickly from eating terrible fast food all the time.

And I was also a budding health coach. I was working with people one on one to help them figure out their nutritional needs but also their emotional eating life. So it was a very interesting mix of coaching techniques that I was bringing to people.

But after being vegan for a decade, I started to get really sick again. I was chronically anemic. I had all these health concerns, and I really tried everything in the vegan framework to fix it. But it turns out I am one of those people that has to eat things like chicken liver and organ meat. That's the only way my body can absorb iron.

So I had this kind of infamous coming out as no longer vegan that went viral. You know, we all want our stuff to go viral, Doug, but this I really didn't want anybody to see it. I was like, I just have to be honest. I had written three vegan cookbooks at this point, so it was a bit of a shift, you could say. And it really blew up in, first, a very kind of over-the-top, extreme way, like people wishing me death, losing friends because I wasn't vegan anymore.

And that also led to my fourth book called Women, Food, and Desire, which is this real examination of women's cravings and our relationship with our bodies. And around that time, I was now getting divorced from Super Size Me husband, and I met Bob, my new husband. I stepped it up, upgraded a little bit. And Bob came from this design and agile consulting, facilitation world, and I have been in the coaching world for just over 10 years at that point, and we began to realize as our relationship grew that we were talking about a lot of the same things. Even though I was doing kind of life coaching, health coaching, he was doing real, like, solid business design kind of consulting, it was like, we're using a lot of the same tools to help people figure out what they want, what they need, what the challenges are, and move forward. So that's kind of the seed that led to this book that has some really powerful tools at the heart of it.

Douglas: That's amazing. I echo that similar sentiment in my journey at Voltage Control, just as a facilitator, not wanting to just be too dogmatic or aligned with one specific discipline. And the more I sought out and the more I learned in all these different silos that there is quite a bit that's common, but there are some stuff that people were doing a little differently. And when you combine those things together, you can get these real awesome, emergent qualities that you wouldn't have otherwise.

So, I'm curious. Can you tell a story or is there a tool in particular that when you think about the fact that you came together, that the sum's greater than the combining of the parts, per se.

Alexandra: By the request of some of our friends, we actually led a couple of couples workshops. And I'll be honest. It was usually the women, like, dragging their boyfriends or husbands to come to these workshops. And we realized they were there for very different reasons. One person wanted one experience, and one person was there for a completely different reason.

And so Bob had this kind of tool from his past life. I think he was also a newspaper design director. Anyway, he said, "You know what, we don't need to get on the same page. We need to get into alignment." And we started teaching this very simple conversation tool to put all the information out on the table. Why are you here? What do you want? What are you worried about? etc..

And after a couple of workshops, we realized, like nothing else from those workshops really took off, but this one simple conversation structure that we taught, people kept texting us and emailing us and saying, "What was that four-step thing that you took us through, again? because I have this other conversation that I need to have."

So over the course of the next two years, people kept bugging us for this thing. We're a little slow on the uptake. I'm like, "All right. Let's just put this in a Google Doc because then we can stop explaining it to everybody. We can just say 'Here it is; here it is; here it is.'"

But we kept getting these incredible stories from our friends who were using it, that it was helping them in their marriage, that it was helping them with negotiations at work, that they were using it like Bob was using it, teaching it in these high-level, CEO boardroom kind of situations. And then the CEO would say, "That was amazing. I'm taking that home to my husband, and we're going to use that conversation at home."

So I  was like, "Oh, my goodness, this one little thing," sometimes it's just this tiny thing that people keep asking for. We didn't even see how valuable it was. And that's the genesis of this whole project, this book.

Douglas: So what are these four steps? You've got me very curious.

Alexandra: So it's a really simple, guided conversation that helps two or more people get really clear and develop just a deeper understanding of or appreciation for each other. It really creates team psychological safety. And there's some very specific things about that in terms of how you run it, right? You're the facilitator guy, so you totally get it. There's some ground rules that you got to set up. You got to set the stage.

And, you know, one thing is, I always tell people, first, never say to someone, "We need to talk." That's the wrong way to introduce any kind of conversation.

Douglas: That'll ruin the rest of my day. All I can think about is, "What are we talking about? What things?"

Alexandra: So, think about how you want to invite someone to a conversation or a meeting. Have a comfortable, distraction-free place. And believe me, we use this in business and in our personal lives, so we're very clear to make sure everybody is well rested. We do not do meetings at the end of the day. We just don't. Make sure you're fed. Make sure no one has had even one glass of alcohol.

Those are three very basic things. Because we are human animals, our bodies are very much aligned with our brains. And if we're not fed, if we've had even a little booze, and if we're exhausted, we're not going to be present or clear. So think about those things before you get to an important conversation.

And then, get clear about what the point is. "What are we talking about and why?" And just, we're very specific. "Okay, we're going to talk about project x so we can become a great team, or we're discussing our summer vacation so that we can both have a wonderful time." That level of clarity.

And then, you go into the conversation. A minute ago I said team psychological safety, and one of the things that we've learned in all of our practice and all of our research is that there is a real inequality of power in most rooms. There's somebody who's got the power, and there's somebody—and there's extroverts and introverts. So we actually request that you time everyone, that everybody gets two or four minutes per share so that it is very equal.

And some people have—it's funny. In Bob and my relationship, he's an incredible verbal processor. He talks it out and gets clear. And I actually need to sit and be quiet for up to 15 seconds sometimes to know what I'm going to say. But when you have a timer and no one else is speaking, there's no crosstalk. It's like, "Okay, I've got this space where I can just relax and think about what it is that I need to say." So give each person the same amount of time. That is true equality.

And then, you go into the four-part conversation. So that's all the set up. And you each share your intentions, concerns, boundaries, and dreams. And you can think of intentions of, why do you want to be a part of this project? Why can this project support your personal values or your goals? What led you to get involved in this? So what are your intentions in being a part of this? And it can be super simple, like, "I want to have fun. I want to learn something, and I want to make money." And again, you all go around; you all share the same amount of time.

And then you go into your concerns. And this is where we encourage you to start being very vulnerable in the spirit of, let's really try to discover who we are. And luckily, the human brain is incredibly good at coming up with fears and worries and concerns. In fact, it's probably the best thing that our brains are good at. And let's tap into it. Let's tap into that negativity bias that we have. Because actually, when you say your worries and concerns out loud in a safe space, and let's really set up these conversations like, "I want to know what you really think. You're not going to get penalized for this. Let's not take anything personally in this room," when you say it out loud, your brain hears it, and it actually has the effect of calming down your amygdala. Your nervous system can chill out a bit. And that way you can actually get clear and calm, which leads to better decision making by the end of it.

Douglas: Well, there's a lot there to unpack. Not only the setting—the one big one is setting the initial conditions. You know, you talked a lot about being well fed, no alcohol, a comfortable space. The invitation, I think, is so critical. And I love that you use that word. Liberating Structures talks a lot about crafting a really good invitation. I think there's some real beauty in that word because it's not that we're telling you what to do. We're inviting you in. It's very open. And also, I love this notion of starting with gratitude and appreciation. Kudos for that because there's some really great design elements at play in that activity.

And when you think about the components that kind of came into this, how did you end up developing that? What did you draw inspiration from? Was it just like you just sat down and it just kind of came to you, or was there a process to kind of develop it and refine it?

Alexandra: So Bob and I have been through so many trainings and coaching programs over the years, before we even came together as a couple. When we started teaching these couples workshops, there was the seed of it. It was like, "Okay, why are we here, and what challenges could we have in getting to what you want?" Those kind of—I mean, those seem like pretty basic questions. But it took some time using it and then teaching it in other settings and boardrooms and with my clients, etc., that we're like, "Oh, it needs to be this order: intentions, concerns, boundaries, and dreams." It took a little time to figure out kind of the magical recipe. Like, you don't want to add the salt at the end of a recipe. It's got to go in at the beginning so that it can spread throughout. So it really became clear through doing it what the order needed to be.

Douglas: I love that you say that, because we're big believers that facilitation requires practice and you have to develop those skills and you have to get comfortable, and a lot of it has to do with confidence. And, you know, it's similar to a musician that's improving, right? You had to get so comfortable with your instrument that you can perform in a very rigid style. Then you're able to, then, let go and kind of flow with the moment and find what lands.

Can you tell any stories about some of the formulas that you tried that just didn't work out and why, and what the lessons to learn from that would be?

Alexandra: Actually, I want to go back to what you just said about playing an instrument. We really describe this four-part structure, we're like, this is playing scales. You know, every great musician still practices their scales. You go dah, dah, dah, dah, right? We do one, two, three, four. And then, eventually, you can improvise. We're now so practiced with it, we'll just—let's say we had a conversation two weeks ago about visiting the in-laws, and now one of us comes up with, "Oh, you know what, I have a new boundary." We can just, like, drop into that conversation at point C instead of point A again. So we have this shared vocabulary where we're kind of always in the conversation about different topics. And that's just—

What's really, really helpful—I'll tell you what my life was like before I learned how to have tough conversations using this structure was I just didn't have tough conversations. I just avoided hard topics. This has given me a sense of—like you said, you have to become confident as a facilitator—I just become confident. Okay, I have four buckets to put all my thoughts and feelings in. And now I know that the science to a good conversation is coming back to the topic, not letting it get off and create—I think that's one of the reasons why I avoided emotional or high-stakes conversations, because I thought I'm going to have to prove everything I believe is right and have logical arguments for everything, and somebody is going to win, and somebody's going to lose. With this structure, it's like, no, we're just in information-gathering zone. And we develop empathy for each other through it, which is so important. That's like the sweet spot of alignment.

Douglas: Yeah. That's amazing.

I was thinking a bit about this notion of being afraid to have some of those conversations, and maybe it's not like people might hear that and think, "Oh, I'm daunted by all this fear," but sometimes it's just subconscious, right? Sometimes we don't even entertain the thought, because our brains are protecting us from that thing that we're deeply fearful of or just avoiding.

And I recently saw some really awesome facilitation guides. It was a guide, but it contained some prompts. And it was written by DiAngelo, who is the author of White Fragility, and these prompts were for basically starting conversations that are hard to start. And she called them silence breakers. And as you talked about being more equipped to have these conversations now, it got me really excited. It reminded me of this notion of silence breakers. And I think it's really important and it's amazing to hear that your work is headed in that same direction.

So as folks start to think about being able to open up in this way or what that experience is like, what should they consider or how should they—what are some things that they need to keep in mind?

Alexandra: I'm so glad you asked that. So we covered intentions and concerns, the first two steps. The third one is boundaries. And that is a very challenging topic for people to come up with answers for. What are my boundaries? And it's not like ordering off a menu, where I'm going to say something and it's a demand of, this is what you're going to do for me or this is what I must have. Think of it like, what are the things I need, the conditions that help me show up to be my best? What are the way—think of them as starter boundaries, right? Take the pressure off of things to be perfect. Think of it as, what do you need to be your personal best? What will help keep us from reaching burn out? What rules or standards help us work together best?

One of the things we discovered, and I cannot believe it took me until my 40s to realize this, but do not start an important conversation at bedtime. Don't. Just don't. It's okay to go to bed angry or unclear, truly. That has been a game changer in my marriage. And I've seen it happen in the workplace, too. People are like, "We have to figure this out today. We're staying until it's done." Actually, everybody's exhausted, and nobody is going to show up and be their best right now, so it's okay for us to take a break and for us to honor the exhaustion that's present.

Douglas: Yeah, I love this notion of boundaries. I'm a big fan of compartmentalization, so what is the right way to—like, where do we put this thought, and what's important right now in this moment? And if we can constrain things and really just kind of neatly package them up, then we can better be in service of the work that we're doing. Maybe we need to put some things aside. Maybe some things are off limits. That's really, really awesome.

The thing that I'm curious about is, just to get your reaction to this idea of honoring yourself, and authentic relating, they have this notion—well, this ground rule—of honoring yourself. So if someone asks something of you, because this is very deeply relating kind of work that they're doing, and so someone could ask you a very personal question because we're trying to build connection, and so there's this notion of, if you don't feel comfortable, then just pass. And so only contribute at the level that you feel comfortable contributing. I think there's some beauty in that. And it's similar to this being gracious with each other.

Alexandra: Well, there's two things that you're reminding me of that I think are so important. Generally, in the room, if there is a designated leader in a work situation, that might be more obvious, right? Like, the team leader or the C-suite-level person. But in our relationship, perhaps the leader could be considered the person who's bringing this topic up. So they're leading the initial situation. That person, we realized, they need to be the most brave. They need to be the most courageous and the most vulnerable. They need to set the tone for, like, "I am going to be super vulnerable here. I'm really going to share my heart and my truth here," so that everybody else is like, "Oh, wow. Okay. This person has been really vulnerable. I'm going to maybe go an inch further in sharing my truth now." So that's one aspect.

But the other one is we really encourage—and this is something I do personally all the time—I go through these four steps by myself, and I write out my thoughts. And we will often—I've definitely coached my clients to do this. We've even done it as a couple, even though we've used this hundreds of times now. We will, like, "Okay, you know what, tomorrow we're going to talk about this topic," to give ourselves some time to think about our intentions, concerns, boundaries, and dreams, before we meet so that we just have some time to gather our thoughts and maybe be more coherent in how we express ourselves. And that is very compassionate and very thoughtful, because not everyone is a verbal processor. Some people need to write it out or take a walk and think about it first. Why not give people a little more time if you're able to?

Douglas: Absolutely. And we often think about multisensory experiences because there's kind of a myth that some people are visual learners and some people are auditory learners. The fact of the matter is we all learn through many different forms, and in any given moment, we may be more attuned to a different style, and we kind of need it all. And so if we as workshop facilitators and designers want the best out of our participants, we need to consider those things. So I think that's really fantastic. And we've even been asking people to do that silent solo work as part of the workshop, because, frankly, people are jam-packed schedules and are super busy, so the pre-work rarely gets done. So to be in service of those people, like you say, that are slower or need more reflection time, just bake it in. And the people that don't need it, well, they'll be fine.

Alexandra: Yeah. You can doodle—

Douglas: Yes, exactly.

Alexandra: —while the rest of us write.

Douglas: That's right.

So I wanted to come back to this comment you made about being authentic. And I think it might have been in the preshow chatter. But when you brought it up, it was around this notion of, you had this strong pull to be true to the brand you've built and true to this identity that was out in the world, and being authentic to your body, to your DNA, to your cellular—like, everything that was physical about your situation was screaming that you needed to behave in a certain way. If you were going to be authentic to that, you had to leave some other stuff behind. In fact, potentially friends and it could have had an impact on livelihood. And that must've been a really challenging moment. And if I really compare it to some of the challenges other people face, it trivializes some of these situations people find themselves in, yet they can't be authentic. And I think it's just may be a beacon to those that are in meetings and not being authentic, because the best way to get to where you want to go and to build strong teams is to be authentic. Sure, you can be a role model in the work that you've already done. But are there any tactics or things people can think about as to how they can really tap into what it means to be authentic for them?

Alexandra: And I can't understress how—and this is true for me and my life. You know, I am myself, and you may have a very different, unique experience. But when I feel I am living inauthentically, I am just incapable of being happy. You know, there was a year and a half where I was hiding that I was eating meat. My business was suffering. My energy was suffering. Everything about my life felt frustrating. And I would rather blow up my life by being really honest, and not honest in a way like, I'm going to tell you what I really think about you. No. Me being honest to myself. I would rather have to deal with the repercussions of that. But I tell you how I've been able to—I mean, since I met Bob and since we've been using this format of communication, I feel so incredibly safe and held because we are both in this radical honesty together where it's very clear, like, we're allowed to evolve and change, and we have a structure that's going to hold us as we evolve and change together and as individuals. I didn't have that in my first marriage, and I witnessed that many people don't feel safe to evolve and change and be themselves. So if you can't change with the people around you, I don't know that you are allowing yourself to change.

Douglas: Yeah. That's interesting because I think that applies deeply inside teams, too, especially as we find ourselves in more and more complex situations. We're not in the days of the factory, where things are repeatable and the same widgets coming down the assembly line every day, one day after the other, or we can just follow a recipe. And so the change itself is changing, and teams have to be able to adapt. And I think the willingness to reinvent the team and be different tomorrow than we were yesterday is really important.

Alexandra: And the last step of the four-part conversation is probably the most important, and it definitely needs to happen at the end, which is you share your dreams. And this is very specific. If this goes incredibly well, what will be true for you as an individual, for us as a team, for the people impacted around us? How will you feel? What will have shifted? You really get into best-case scenario, imagination land, and you start to feel the oxytocin flowing, the connection. And when I hear from you what your dreams are, and I really feel you connected to that, it's almost impossible for me to not want that for you, too. And it really, even if there are concerns and boundaries which seem to be in conflict, and you know that you've got some figuring out to do after this conversation, the dreams brings you all back together. Okay, how can we work together to make this work? It's a really foundational.

Douglas: I'm going to switch gears a little bit, though. Food's been a pretty core part of your life, and it's hard to do work and it's hard to meet as a team without eating, without having food. And when we met in person, when we had workshops in real life, we had to think about, what's for lunch, and what's the catering, what are we going to order? And that's not as much of a concern anymore.

In fact, I've seen some jokes around the Internet. I think it was a lady. Her husband was attending a virtual conference. And so she prepared a bunch of horrible food for his virtual-conference experience. So like, soggy wraps. Yeah, exactly. Dry chicken, soggy wraps.

Alexandra: Really bad chicken.

Douglas: Had some pudding in a little cocktail dish. But all joking aside, what is your recommendation, as a health coach, for teams that are wanting to think about, what is a great workshop diet? What should they be thinking about eating when they're wanting to concentrate more, to work together, stay focused?

Alexandra: I'm so glad you brought this up. This is one of my favorite things to talk about. No conference cookies. Just keep the sugar out of it. Seriously. It does not help in the long run. Everybody crashes. Fruit, for sure. Have some of those natural sugars. Have some in-season, good-quality fruits. Variety of things. People do need a little bit sugar. But if you eat two cookies, half an hour, hour from now, you're worthless.

Douglas: As a diabetic, I've had to dive into a lot of this stuff. And the thing that really clicked for me, it's okay if you have a little sugar. It's okay if you have some fat. But when you mix fat and sugar, that's doing a major whammy on you. And I think that's where desserts really kill us. And it's like if you're eating fruit, it's literally no fat and it has fiber, which is good. It's going to slow down absorption. But man, the fat actually hijacks your system, and you absorb the sugar slower, but it really hits you harder on the end because your body can't pull it down as fast because it really stays with you a lot longer and just, I mean, it really does a number on you. And that's where the cookies are different than the fruit.

Alexandra: Yeah. So I recommend, get the sodas out of the room. Have iced tea. Caffeine, I think, is the drug that we all got to keep in the room, in some form, but have it be unsweetened stuff if at all possible. And have high-protein stuff. Have good-quality meats and veggies. Keep the sugar as much out of the room as possible.

And the other side of it is it's not just about the food that we eat. You've got to include movement breaks regularly. Do not make people sit for an hour, even. Do some kind of, "All right, everybody's going to stand up, and we're going to stretch at the 30-minute mark." It releases BDNF in the brain, brain-derived neurotrophic factor. It's like Miracle-Gro for your brain. It really gets you back up. Do a little bit of breathing exercises. That's as important as what you eat.

Douglas: Yeah. I love that. We love the stretch-and-share fun activity, and especially in the virtual space, because cadence and turn taking can be strange and foreign, and you can't just go around the circle. So, yeah. Getting out of the chair. And as a facilitator, I think it's really important to really model that behavior and encourage it, and make sure that people know that, man, this is serious stuff, Zoom fatigue and other things. It's not only the—you talked about the benefits of getting the movement so that it's improving our thinking and that we're coming with better ideas. But there's actually a negative consequence of not doing some of this stuff, making sure people don't just use the breaks as an opportunity to say, "I'll tab over their email and just start doing more text stuff." Excellent.

Alexandra: Yeah.

Douglas: I want to talk a little bit about differentiated learning and just to hear a little bit about the work that you're doing around supporting folks that might have different needs. And so when you're working through some of this alignment stuff, do you ever run into situations where maybe someone's struggling with concerns or boundaries? And how do you help those individuals that just maybe need a little something different than the rest of the group?

Alexandra: That's a really great question. And I can actually bring an example from my 13-year-old son. He has dyslexia and ADHD. So he thinks differently than I do. His brain just works differently. And I find that breaking it up into actually two or three versions of the same conversation over the space of a couple days. Like, I pre-set the scene, day one. "Hey, we need to talk about," like we just did today, "We need to talk about going back to school in the fall because we don't know what schools are going to look like here in New York City. There's all kinds of ideas, and nobody knows what's up. And we know there's a couple of options on the table. So here's what I know so far. Do you have any concerns or questions about that before we talk about it in a couple of days with your dad? Just to drop it in there and ask him the open-ended questions so that in the background it's running. His brain can be prepared to think about it in a day or two.

Douglas: I love that. I always talk about the best workshop homework is where they don't really have to do anything, but they're doing it.

Alexandra: Yeah.

Douglas: Right? Because if it's just enough to plant the seed in their subconscious, they're going to be able to participate more deeply when the time comes, versus giving them a bunch of busy work or having them go do things that require present, hands-on stuff, which no one does.

Alexandra: Yeah, yeah. I've learned so much from being his mom and helping him learn to think and me understanding how he thinks. And I've been working with women as a success-in-life coach for over 10 years, and 10 years as a health coach before that. And I just realized that different people need different versions of the same question.

Actually, in the book Radical Alignment, we give dozens of options for different scenarios. We talk about how people have used the, we call it, the all-in method. Those four steps are the all-in method. People have used it to plan their weddings, like, huge multi-continent weddings, and they planned with this. But people also use it for their design teams, and they use it in H.R., and they use it at home. So through the book, there's just dozens of ways to ask the same question, depending on your circumstances. So be willing to be flexible and curious. What's another way I could ask this?

Douglas: Wow. I love this notion of, what is another way I could ask this? And I think the hallmark of a great listener, a great conversation, is fantastic questions. So what are some of your favorite questions?

Alexandra: I actually really love the dreams questions. What are you doing, and what would be the most amazing outcome for this? I don't think we often get the opportunity to really dream big and share it out loud in a way where we're not going to get shot down. So like, the "Oh, you, Pollyanna," or "You're crazy."

I'm also an artist. I come from a family of artists. It's kind of a miracle that any of us became artists, considering this culture we live in that is so down on artists. Like, "Oh, you better have a backup plan," or "You're going to be a starving artist." You know, those ideas just get woven into the culture. So I love the invitation. Just say, like, "What would you like for Radical Alignment to happen when it publishes?" I'm like, "I would love it to be a New York Times' bestseller. I want this in every middle school in America. I want every eighth grader learning how to have tough conversations in a way where they feel capable." Like, that is my dream. That's absolutely my dream.

Douglas: That's phenomenal. So good.

And let's talk a little bit about—one of my favorite questions is, if you can make meetings better, any average meeting—because as you know, I'm on a mission to rid the world of horrible meetings—

Alexandra: God bless you.

Douglas: —if you were to do one thing or just change one thing about meetings, what would it be?

Alexandra: For people to feel really safe to be themselves. I think people are dying for an opportunity to really be safe, to be themselves, and be accepted. I mean, that's the bottom line.

Douglas: So I'd love to end with a message to the listener. So if there is anything that you'd want to leave them with, what might it be?

Alexandra: I want to invite you to try to bring structure to your conversat—I know I sound a little over the top, but this has truly changed so much about my life. It has changed decades-old family dysfunction, and it has changed my work and how successful my business is. Bring this structure to try it. Try this four-part conversation. Try it a few times. It has absolutely changed my life, my friends' lives. The woman who wrote the foreword, she will inspire the heck out of you. An entrepreneur, who is a mom of five, she's, like, "This saved my marriage." I'm like, that's a great testimonial for this book. Bring a little structure to your conversations, a little bit more professional structure to your intimate conversations, and a little bit more vulnerable intimacy to your professional conversations.

Douglas: It's been a pleasure chatting with you today and hearing about your approach and your structure. I'm a huge fan of structure, and this falls right in with the work we do and what I love to talk about. So it was a tremendous pleasure chatting with you today.

And one last piece of housecleaning. How can folks find you? How can they get the book? I know it's not quite out yet. Give us a little bit to go on.

Alexandra: We would love people to go preorder the book, actually. You can go to radicalalignmentbook.com. Listen, if you buy one or a couple copies and you just give us your little order number on the website, you get a free workshop with us. If you get 10 or more copies of the book, you get an eight-week training with me and my husband. So go to radicalalignmentbook.com, order the books there from wherever you love to get books. We are going to help you use this in your life and in your business beautifully.

Douglas: Excellent. And amazon.com, other suppliers as well.

Alexandra: Amazon, Kindle, Audible, your local independent bookstore, you can order it all through radicalalignmentbook.com.

Douglas: Radicalalignmentbook.com. So incredible. And I wish you the best of luck. I hope you do make the New York Times' bestseller list. And again, it was a real pleasure to have you on the show.

Alexandra: Thank you.

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